Battery Maintainer Recom

[gotcrappie]

I am looking for recommendations for a battery maintainer to keep my boat batteries maintained for winter storage. Thanks.

[CatFan]

Get a float charger. The best thing is a 3 or 4 stage onboard charger about 10A per bank with enough banks for all of your batteries. Steer clear of anything that mentions trickle charging.

This one is decent Amazon.com: Black & Decker BM2B Smart Battery Charger 2 Amp Automatic Float Mode Battery Maintainer: Automotive

This one looks like it would work based on the description, but I'm skeptical of the company's products.

Amazon.com: Automatic Battery Float Charger: Automotive

[Hanr3]

And for $60 you can buy a Schumacker Ship to Shore charger. It charges at 2amp, 10amp, and 15 amp, plus numerous types of battery. Once it hits full charge it drops into trickle charge mode until its disconnected. I disconnect my batteries, fully charge them, and forget about them till spring. Charge, reconnect and enjoy another season. I use the charger for my riding mower batteries, my auto/truck batteries, and my deep cycle marine batteries. Its a great little unit. Not only will it tell you how many vots the battery has, it will tell you the percent of charge it has. When you set it to charge it does a quick charge to like 80%, then steps down the charge rate to 90%, and then drops it again until its fully charged, once charged it switches to trickle charge mode. Takes about an hour to fully charge, however I plug it in and let it go all night.

[Hanr3]

Quick update. I have been having some trouble with my truck battery recently, hooked it up to my charger and let it do its thing, next morning the display showed Bad, as in the battery is bad. Took it to my service center and they hooked it up to thier test exuipment and got the same result, Bad battery, it wouldn't hold a deep charge. Not sure you cen get that kind of information from an on-board charger, especially since they dont have a digital readout.