Talking about winter/battery maintenance, rarely driving or only short car trips, and the topic of using chargers and maintainers came up. And whether they can be used while leaving everything else connected.

From my mid-00s Acura manual: "Charging the battery with the cables connected can seriously damage your car’s electronic controls. Detach the battery cables before connecting the battery to a charger."

Presumably chargers and maintainers were less "smart" a decade ago when that was written (and maybe internal auto electronics less protected) - but is this an issue if using a recent generation multi-stage smart charger/maintainer?

Random examples from a search: NOCO Genius, Battery Tender, BatteryMINDer, CTEK, Schumacher, Pulsetech, etc.

For obvious reasons, every charger manufacturer will say to always follow your auto manual, so was wondering about in the real world.

Thanks.

 

I have 4 cars that see less than 500 miles a year, and all hooked up to Battery Tenders. You can buy TEnders that can do 4 cars at a time. I also have two bikes on Tenders.

Everythign is all hooked up, and OEM, and no issues.

When I want to drive, I unplug the charger to the cigarette light, and walah, drive it away.

I keep the gas tanks full, and use STaBil.

Good luck.

 

Thanks for the info. Good to know.

What a great system you devised for multiple vehicles.

The CLA connection seems a great convenience. Though guess it wouldn't work with a TSX that cuts off the accessory adapter with the ignition off (only enabled when the ignition is moved to position 1 or more).

 

^^My TSX is not on battery tender, so I didn't know that. Thank you for sharing.

The battery tenders have almost 4 diff ways (I know off ) you can charge. So you can directly do it through battery, if the charger/cig port is closed.