nineeagles

I just bought a trickle charger for my stored 84......the battery is fairly new but has depleted in the past month from not running....it is COLD COLD COLD here....about 0.....I bought one at wallymart for $16 and got home and my lady tells me......uh....I got you one for Christmas.....she said she paid $30 so it might be a little better than the one I bought......oh well.....

cas951

Make sure you have a overcharge protection. There are sevral trickle chargers out there. Some have overcharge protection and some don't.

Chase72

I agree with Cas951... the more expensive ones usually have a microprocessor that makes sure the charger doesn't overcharge... the other issue is to make sure it doesn't reverse the current either (draw power away from your battery) when it's not plugged into an outlet... It's worth spending a few more $$$ up front (cheaper than replacing your battery.

By the way, you are lucky to have such a thoughtful lady! I'm still convincing my wife that snow tires are a necessity for the S2... ;-)

Chase

IceShark

That is one problem I would NEVER have. Minneapolis got hit somewhere around 1992 on Halloween with back to back 17" snowfalls. I was out of town down in Chicago and had left the 951 at the office. With fat wide performance rubber. It took us about 6 hours to get the car 4 miles from the office to home.

Since she wasn't the greatest with trying to rock a manual shift car from forward to reverse, guess who walked most of the way pushing the car? Every Halloween and heavy snowfall I'll hear about this until the day one of us dies.

Chase72

IceShark... Hmm... I think I'll have to find a snow storm this winter!!! She thinks I should just garage it, but I can't be without my toy! We'll see... Thanks for the good story!

IceShark

Oh, the story gets even better with all the details she will never let me forget. I discovered that the tires gave better traction in reverse than forward - something to do with the uni-directional tread pattern. So we were driving it back asswards most of the way. Then a cop stopped to see what we were doing. Illinois plated car, my Minnesota driver's license, registered address with a friend down in Chicago (MN plate taxes would have been around $700 but IL was 49 bucks so you can guess which state I chose to get the plates in), insurance with another address ...... and to top it off I had a 300 mag Weatherby hunting rifle and 400 rounds of ammunition in the rear hatch. I was going hunting in Alaska, had some strange/problem ammunition from Winchester/Olin that was flying crazy so dropped it off at their testing facility since I was in the area and told them to sort it out. They did and gave me this heavy box of ammunition. All free of charge.

But the cop thought I must have been some sort of wacko - imagine all this coming together at one point in time. Sorting that out took a good part of the 6 hour ordeal. I should have just waited for the snow to melt!

But I have enough ammunition to probably last forever. Thanks to Winchester, they are really good people. Buy their product as they actually stand behind it and will go beyond all reasonable efforts to make things right.

Chase72

Ice: DUDE, what a story! And all the ammunition in the trunk... I would have paid good money to see the look on that cop's face! All you needed was a broken taillight, radar detector on the windshield, a mounted buck's head next to the ammo, and powder donut residue on the dash and it would have been an overnight stay for sure!

So after that, what does she have to say about snow tires??? ;-)

IceShark

She says "drive the truck".

As far as the ammunition, I would have been happy with 2 or 3 boxes (40 to 60 rounds) to sight in and do the actual job at hand. Winchester sort of overwhelmed me. SEALs shoot alot of live rounds on training, maybe that had something to do with it.

In any event the cop was freaked and playing with his sidearm as he wondered what to do. That is the bad part if you have an unfit cop. Fortunately, everything worked out.

Plum

I use an Interstate trickle charger with overcharge protection and it works great.
How much snow did you get up at the Springs?
Hope all is well.
Mike

hacker-pschorr

I fried two almost new batteries in one week this way. I "assumed" the low amp charge option was a safe trickle charge - nope. After 1 day there was battery fluid pissing out of the battery (not in the car thank god).

Chase72

Ice: sounds like you were stopped by Chief Wiggum from the Simpsons... "uh, there's a suspect driving a car, with ammo in it. He's wearing a hat. I repeat. The suspect is wearing a hat!" LOL

nineeagles

Plum.....we have about 10" or so of natural snow and about another foot of man made.....cold here brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr