</font><font color="blue" class="small">( I use a Battery Tender on my T-Bird, Triumph motorcycle and Kubota with great success. They come with the usual charger jaws and one you can attach to the nuts on the cables which has a female plug on the end.)</font>
My current situation is that I had a massive corrosion problem, broken bolts, clamps that wouldn't come off the battery terminals, etc. I was over my head.. so my John Deere dealer sent out a guy who put in a new "Strongbox Hibernator" battery, and I have a "Battery Tender Plus" hooked up to it.
Very handy.. now I have three plugs dangling from the tractor.. engine heater, hydraulic heater, and battery charger. I just leave the battery one hooked on all the time at this point.
Question: after the install of the new battery, I put on the Battery Tender and in a few hours is was reading a steady green.. meaning fully charged and in float mode.
Yesterday, I fired it up, let it warm up for 20 minutes, then did some work with it for maybe another half hour, figure roughly an hour of running. When I shut it down, I hooked up the Battery Tender, and it immediately went into "red" mode, meaning battery is at less than 80% charge. An hour or so later, it switched to flashing green mode, meaning over 80% charge and topping it off. A few hours later, it finally went to solid green mode, meaning it was now fully charged and in float mode again.
Is this normal??
After running the tractor for about an hour, my battery was *less* charged than it had been before starting it up. Kind of makes one wonder about the alternator, etc... or maybe it's just that I know squat about batteries. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
My intention is to leave the Battery Tender hooked up constantly.. because I've heard this extends the useful life of the battery. Would people tend to agree?
I smeared electrolytic grease on all the terminals, and will check them routinely from now on.
The new battery is, I gather, standard John Deere issue.. six caps, as opposed to the old one with only two large rectangular caps.
Okay, any thoughts generated from this bunch of babble of mine?? /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif