Mobile battery charging?

[Lucky]

I was thinking of how I might use/equip a tralor for the bikes and came up with an idea:
I was wondering about charging a battery while a bike is towed on a trailor..

do you think that if a set of wires run from say tail lights of a vehicle to the bike battery would act as sort of a trickle charger? similar to jump charging a car battery.
 I suppose another way to do it would be to run heavy guage wire from the vehicle battery to the bike battery (disconnected from the bike)

workable?

[Kenny]

O.K. Lucky,
     What method would you use to control the charge rate?
 I would be looking into a small Solar Charger, I have three of these units & they work great. We start our Garden Tractor(Snow Blower attached) any time and any temperature with no glichtes. I've even considered attaching one to the vision-below the windscreen shelf area. Up here you can buy them  for $17. bucks Cdn when on sale.
             Cheers Ken S      

[cdnlouie]

Probably better to use a 12v to 110V converter (the plug in the cigaretter lighter type) and plug in a 1Amp trickle charger.  Those converters are handy little items for the laptop, television, etc.

Or go to a small solar panel trickle charger, those things are getting cheaper now.

[RobTx]

I was thinking the same thing Louie.  I got my converter from Fry's on sale for $20, I think.  200 watts continous, I use it to charge my cell phone, run my laptop,etc.  That and a 1 or even 1/2 amp trickle charger would work good.
Rob

[George R. Young]

Wire a 12 volt light between the vehicle battery and the vision battery, you know you won't get more than the current rating of the bulb as charging current.

I use this for 110VAC charging, a diode, a 100W bulb, and voila, about 1/2 amp trickle charger. Not terribly safe though.

[Leather]

Lucky -

There's no problem connecting your +12 hot lead from your car to your bike battery.

Connect the batteries in parallel of course ... :-)

I would recomend a seperate wire from battery to trailer wiring.

Your concern about charging rates is valid but only comes into play if one of the batteries  (car or bike) is not fully charged.  Consider this:

- If both batteries good  (ie will hold charge) and are charged normally then the car charging system will maintain both batteries normally.  This is totally like the dual battery setup on most all bigger (19'+) boats.  You've seen that big switch on boats:  Left,Both,Right.   The batteries are hooked in parrallel exactly like you are considering.


To be safe, simply put a big fuse on the wire going to the bike.  I would think 15amp would do it.  If for some reason a battery goes bad and tries to drawn down the system, it'll blow the fuse.  Otherwise you can expect both batteries to discharge and charge at normal nominal rates  2-3 amps.

You could throw a diode into this if you want to protect your bike battery from draining dead if you accidentally kill your car battery.  But not totally neccesary.

Lastly,  as for the wire.  The cheapest and best wire you can use for this kind of stuff  (I use this for all my boating and  trailer wiring)  is simply:

Heavy Duty power cords from Home Depot, etc...  Get the 14 gauge (smaller the gauge better).  Cheapest wire you can get per foot and waterproof!  You just have to live with ORANGE.  Cut up and use wire crimp connectors  (they also sell those).

- Good luck

[rick_nowak]

in the vw parts area of ebay people are selling on a regular basis a small solar charger which comes in each new vw, sits on the dash(i think) and plugs into the cigarette lighter.  there seem to be a couple of types but it must be a sort of trickle charger.  enough to keep the battery topped up.
i recall them going for $20 or so.  try your local vw dealer.a problem i would forsee is wind.  these are not the sturdyiest of things.   rubber side down