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