Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim314
This is really a good thought, but the wire to the boot light cannot carry much current. If you would connect a charger to such a wire, it would likely have to be a charger which is current limited to 1A to 3A or so. A heavy duty charger might overload the wire and at best blow a fuse.
|
Yes, it is indeed only a low current circuit, but it will be fused. Now, the lowest value of fuse used will be 5 Amp, so as long as the charger doesn't deliver more than 5 Amps it will work fine. Quite right, a heavy duty charger will probably blow the fuse, perhaps I should have made it clear that a low-power charger is what's needed here, left on for quite a long time.
My charger would work - I think 5 Amps is the max it will go to, takes all night to charge a battery but it does it gently and carefully. If in doubt, just wire in a 21W bulb in series with it, to act as a resistor, at least until the battery has taken a fair bit of charge and will be drawing less current.
Whatever happens it will not "fry" the electrics, the worst it can do is blow a fuse - that's what they're there for.
However, as above, if you don't mind jacking the car up in the air enough to get at the starter, then this of course will also work. In fact, as this is a very heavy duty cable, you could "jump" onto it from another battery rather than use a charger if you wanted to. I think I'd use a charger though - more gentle. Any permanently live terminal will work, the only issue is how much current it can take.