Check Your Jump Starter

[ski3pin]

Since we carry an Anti-Gravity XP-1 jump starter in our truck, an annual spring chore is checking that it is charged and ready to go to work if needed.

 

[Casa Escarlata Robles Too]

Thanks for the reminder.I need to plug ours in to the camper inverter for a few hours of solar
juice.Since it's free no need to use the house power.
Frank

 

[JaSAn]

Checked and charged before every major trip and in spring.

Good idea about using camper solar, Frank.

 

[Vic Harder]

Have you thought of putting in a place in the rig where you have a power outlet to keep it "trickle" charging until needed?

 

[ski3pin]

Have you thought of putting in a place in the rig where you have a power outlet to keep it "trickle" charging until needed?

Yes, I have but have found it near full charge each time I've checked it so I've not wanted to take the time or effort. And, as Frank noted, I can always top it off in the camper with solar. We've never had a dead battery on the truck....knock on wood, knock on wood, knock on wood......but we've been asked many times if we have jumper cables. The small jump starter is a lot handier.

 

[JaSAn]

Have you thought of putting in a place in the rig where you have a power outlet to keep it "trickle" charging until needed?

Mine is Li-ion, so should it be kept on a charger all the time?

 

[Vic Harder]

Mine is Li-ion, so should it be kept on a charger all the time?

Dunno. Mine is a NOCO Lithium as well, and I have found that it discharges over time, faster than I thought it would.

 

[JHanson]

Neither Lithium Ion nor LiFePo4 (lithium iron phosphate) batteries should be trickle-charged by a charger that constantly forces a small current into the battery. They should be charged to capacity, then disconnected. On the other hand I understand they can be float-charged if the charger circuit is designed so the battery can reject excess charge.

 

[rubberlegs]

Since we carry an Anti-Gravity XP-1 jump starter in our truck, an annual spring chore is checking that it is charged and ready to go to work if needed.

We'd like to thank the ski3pins for loaning their charged-up jump starter. It worked perfectly on our Tacoma when, in a remote area, we couldn't start our truck. We used it three times in the next couple of days. Later, I read the instructions which said it could start quite a few times (I forget -- 15 or 25 times?) as long as it had 3 out of 5 LEDs lit. It's so small and lightweight. I can hardly believe such a small device works.

I thought about removing our lithium 100ah battery from the camper, with its discharge rate of 100amps, and trying to jump with it. But only in an emergency, since it's not meant for high amperage. I read the Tacoma starter might need twice that. Maybe over a day or two it might charge the truck battery, but ours had reached its useful age. So that probably wouldn't have worked well.

We had to interrupt our trip to get a new truck battery, which has been working perfectly (so far, knock on formica).

Thank you again, ski3pins!!