welcome back to steve rob reviews on the desk
behind me here i've got an interesting setup and uh this is going to be a continuation of
a video i did a little while ago about using a battery maintainer and i'm going to take one
of these and i'm going to mount them underneath my truck permanently but there's some things you
really should consider when you're thinking about you know mounting it permanently
because there are designated there's designated units out there that are called
on board battery maintainers and none of these are them and i didn't really consider buying one
of them because i thought what i got is better but generally i'm not interested in charging my
battery up that's not what the whole idea behind a battery maintainer is just to park my vehicle
and plug it in and have it maintain the battery not charging it up all the time so the unit
i bought yes i did buy a new one and uh i'm going to show you on the bench here what
i bought and the differences between them and then i'm going to point out to you which kind
not to buy because surprisingly yeah there's a lot of these units out there that you should not
even consider for a permanent installation so uh let's take a look at the bench here and let's
take a look at the different ones that i have i'm going to take you out to my shed and i'm
going to show you uh the setup that i have that i maintain some batteries over the winter time
and the reason why i bought the new unit is uh well because the ones inside my shed
they've been running great all this time and there's a little bit of differences between
the uh the dell trying or the uh battery tender junior and this other unit that i bought and uh
so let's take a look and let's see the differences okay so let's start off with uh
the battery tender junior here and i saved everything you know that it came
originally with but i only ever really use the unit like this with the battery clips
but the first thing i'd like to mention is deltrans does not make anything cheesy with their
clips or anything like that they all seem to be fastened on nice and you know like none of
these are meant to be suited for i believe it is ip64 and ip65 dust proof and waterproof they're
not designed for that right so there's other units on there you know out in the market that
are rated for that but this is what it came with and the one thing i noticed it's fused with
the battery clips using the battery clips or if you're using the ring eyelets and so you just
leave this fastened to your battery and then you can unplug it from the battery clips and plug
it in here when you want to use it and you know that's a good idea but this part here i don't
really care for too much i only use this style when i'm using it indoors because look at the
plug on it right you'd have to plug an extension cord in there so this is the one that i've been
using in the last video i really like this unit and you know the main thing about picking one
of these units is when you plug it in you want it just to go back to the original settings so
you don't have to fool around with the buttons all the time right and some units yeah you have to
really do your research because some of them you got to play around with the buttons all the time
where if you just want to have a quick connector you know plugging it in well you got to lift
the hood every time and reset so i mean this is another problem too but on the ctec unit here well
this is far above most of them and i mean the way that they've connected everything together you
know with their solder joints and strain relief and of course they have a fuse connector
on the the clips and here's the ringtail or ring connectors that go on your battery and
it's fused as well so now we get onto the unit that i just purchased and it's this
moto power thing and it's got the fuse and it's got the uh you know the connector
here as i just go on your battery permanently and no fuse on this one though this is for the
battery clips and you know it seems to be in there pretty good you know it's crimped and soldered
and this is the unit here but there is no fuse at this end and i don't know why so i'm going to
take you out to the shed in a second but i've got this unit but it is not the plus it is just the
regular one and the only thing that this thing does is it lights up it comes with instructions
and the instructions are actually quite quite well written and all i wanted it to do was just plug
it in turn it on and go and that's it i didn't want to have to fiddle around with settings and
all that now this one here is like multi-step process of charging and you know what i haven't
a clue what this thing actually does over time but the other one i have has been working good
all this time and i thought you know what i'll get another one of these because this was like 35
bucks so let's go to the shed and i'll show you the setup i have for charging my batteries
okay so let's just go in the shed here and leave the door open i'll turn the light on but this is the setup here and you probably can't
see it but there is like a green light on there and this is my older battery tender from
deltrans on there and the whole idea is i just charge up these two batteries now this
one here is from my diesel a log splitter and that's been on there for years using
this 800 milliamp battery maintainer and you know just less than one amp is fine i mean
i don't need to be charging anything all i'm doing is just maintaining the battery but what
i'm going to do is i'm going to bring this one in and i'm going to show you how you
have to actually do your research first before you can pick one of these units because
not all of these are designed to actually be mount permanently because well they'll just destroy
your battery so let's take a look at that next okay so let's do some testing but the first
thing i want to say is the uh the small little unit out there that i had in there charging
my uh diesel uh log splitter battery well when i unplug that unit it completely shuts down
and that's the difference between some units that are not really suited for this and some units that
are better suited for different applications where you're just going to put it on and leave the
cord on and then if you're going to start up your vehicle or use it at all well you have
to take everything off and that's not what i wanted so i'll take you over to the bench here
and i'll show you the difference between them okay so let's just take a look at the
difference here and you'll see exactly what i'm talking about so the unit is not plugged
in there's no lights on there's nothing going on but if we come over here so i brought the
battery in if i come over here and i just plug it in guess what you have it lit up and
that's the problem so you can't mount one of this style where you know the unit is going
to actually light up or you'll have a digital readout or all that kind of stuff because when
it's not plugged into your electrical supply it's going to be drawing curt out of
your battery and that's not a good thing so it just counteracts the whole idea of keeping
your battery charged up this type of unit will discharge your battery when it's not actually
plugged into your electrical supply so the unit inside my shed that's charging everything up is
exactly like this except this is just a little upgrade from the last one and i have to actually
test to make sure that this one here well when i put it on the battery it's going to uh
light up or not and if it lights up well i can't use it but the other one when i disconnect it yeah
it doesn't uh it doesn't stay lit up so let's take a look and let's see i'll have to put the battery
cable clips on there and i'll bring you back okay so here we are right here
you see i've got it plugged in and if we come over here you can see it's all
lit up green so for this to be acceptable for uh an on board permanent mounting well you
have to unplug the cord and make sure that the light doesn't come on right so when you
want to plug in your vehicle and not have to lift your hood and i'm going to show how that's done in
the future how i'm going to wire all this but uh all we have to do is just unplug it and the light
has gone out and that's exactly what you want now i did try it with this one here and this is the
exact same so this is acceptable this one kind is acceptable but if you buy one that's got like all
kinds of digital display and you have it unplugged but you have it hooked up to your battery and it
still has lights on here well that's just gonna you know just discharge your battery but what i am
going to do is i'm going to use this connector set from the battery tender on this unit rather than
this one because to me this is a little cheesy but you know what it's it's less than an amp so
i mean what do you need the only reason why i prefer this style here is look how nice the ends
are molded you know and they're sealed in there and i think it's a far superior uh idea but
yeah these would be acceptable too you know but so yeah i think this particular unit
here is going to serve my needs well it is not dust proofed and waterproof and all that
kind of stuff but where i'm going to put it i have no worries about it at all okay so in the future
i am going to show you how this is all attached to my vehicle and uh i'm not going to have to lift
the hood or have a cord come through the grille or any of that stuff i'm going to have a
nice little connector that plugs in down below where i can just plug it in and don't
have to worry about it because this unit here there's no need to press buttons and you know
reset everything and do everything because if you take a look a lot of the instructions on
all of them it'll say that it saves the settings from the first original time and that's what
this does and most of them all do that as well same with the ctek it did that as well so
you never have to fool around with it but there are some out there every time you unplug
it well you're going to have to lift the hood and go through and select what kind of battery
you have because this does all the different batteries right what kind of battery you have and
you know this is far superior to just you know fooling around with it all the time you really
don't want to it's not like i'm i'm taking this vehicle and i'm parking it in my garage for the
winter no all i'm doing is i'm plugging it in so that if i want to use the vehicle maybe every week
or every two weeks i can unplug it start it up and drive away so i mean it's not like one of these
units that well i would just put you know in my garage for the whole winter for storing a vehicle
because really all you really have to do is just do what i've been doing all these years just put
the battery clips on and you know lower the hood and just leave it there until the spring right
well in my situation i'm using it because my battery will drain really well like to the point
where after two or three weeks of sitting at minus 20 degrees well the truck's just not going to want
to start too good i'm just gonna you know have my my alternator just go full blast you know
and what are you doing you're wearing out your starter starting it on a low charge and
you're also wearing out your alternator by just you know letting it go full blast and full charge
until it can charge up the battery again right so it's best just to use one of these and uh keep
it charged all the time so thanks for joining me here today if you haven't seen this channel before
you're welcome to subscribe come back again and uh let's have some more interesting things that
i find interesting hopefully you do too cheers
