Powering a 12V fuel pump with battery charger?

[LittleBittyBigJohn]

I'm trying to sort out my fuel storage situation at home. I have a 90 gal diesel truck bed transfer tank. I don't have any need for it to be in my truck. I'm thinking about using it for my home diesel storage. I have a potential place for it in the shop but it's got a 12v pump instead of a 120v so plugging it in won't work. I don't want to spend the money for a new pump and if I get a dedicated battery I figure it will go bad pretty quickly from seldom use. I can hook up the leads to the tractor battery but I would prefer to avoid that nuisance if possible.

I have a couple of battery chargers that are hardly ever used. Would a manual 12V charger be ok to run the pump? I know I can hook it up and try, and it will probably work but I'm not sure about long term damage?

On a side note I would love to have about 30-50 gal bulk gasoline storage with a pump but that scares me a little...

 

[LittleBill21]

strongly depends on the charger, some need the battery to regulate or even run, some like my noco, have a power supply capability

 

[CalG]

strongly depends on the charger, some need the battery to regulate or even run, some like my noco, have a power supply capability

$30 will get you one of these. add a line cord and a length of zip cord to the 12V pump.
Put the setup in a tupperware case for dust protection.

 

[Paystar]

I've been running my Fill-Rite 12 volt pump off a battery charger for years.
I have a 400 gallon tank in my barn and that's how I do it.

 

[grsthegreat]

That might be able to be done, but why. I run mine on a used, 5 year old battery from an old generator i serviced. It only needs to be recharged 2 times a year on an overnight charge. It could probably be stretched out to once a year. I guess it depends on how many times a month its used to fill.

 

[LouNY]

I either use my boost pak or clip onto the battery lead at the starter as that's the easiest to reach.

 

[DarkBlack]

To the OP: what are you going to use, to fill that tank, when it’s in your shop?

 

[LittleBittyBigJohn]

To the OP: what are you going to use, to fill that tank, when it’s in your shop?

I will likely just fork it onto a trailer and haul it to the gas station.

 

[George2615]

I have a 275 gallon tank I use for my tractor fuel. It has a 12V pump and I use a jump pack (I have a couple of them). I keep the jump pack plugged in my garage to keep it charged. I get #2 Home heating oil delivered when I need it.

 

[ning]

You're basically asking if you can use a complicated 12v transformer to power your pump.

The answer depends on how much power the transformer (battery charger) can put out, and whether it'll put the power out to something that may or may not look like a battery. Some of the "smarter" battery chargers probably won't do this because they're going to possibly run briefly and then test the voltage on the "battery", and given that your pump will read zero volts, a smart charger would say "that's one dead battery if anything at all" and decline any further charging.

I also would use an old battery for this (along with the charger, of course). You likely don't need a battery sufficient for running an engine's starter motor; a lot of batteries well past their prime can't be used in a car or tractor any more but work fine for smaller functions.

Case in point, I'm currently using a battery that I took out of my motorcycle five years ago as the power bank for my driveway gate opener. You can charge the battery to 12.6V, but under any reasonable load it's a couple volts lower but the gate opener doesn't mind and its little 10,000rpm electric motor probably just runs at 9,000rpm instead.

 

[sixdogs]

I have two 12V pumps and power off old "dead" batteries I have on an occasional trickle charger. "Expired" batteries have powered my 12V pumps for years. I replace when a better one gets replaced but have never been let down. Apparently those pumps don't need much to power them.

 

[newbury]

Do you have any old junked "PC's" around? IIRC the power supplies usually had a 12 volt out.

 

[4570Man]

A heavy duty battery charger would have no problem at all. A lighter duty charger that’s more common probably doesn’t supply sufficient amperage. I’d a lot rather use an old battery and trickle charge it every now and then. I usually keep really dead batteries laying around to turn in for a core and then keep sorta good batteries when I take them out of starting service. One of those sorta good batteries has been on my fuel tank for a good while and pumped hundreds of gallons.

 

[LittleBittyBigJohn]

Turns out this is a moot point... I put about 50 gal in the tank, I hooked it up to the tractor battery and the pump did not come on. Fiddled with it a little bit then noticed the pump motor was super hot. I took the motor off the pump and the shaft would not spin. Took the face plate off the motor and the armature was rusted tight in the motor enclosure. I broke the output coupler/ shaft of the armature while trying to free it. My neighbor gave me an old manual diaphragm pump. I'm going to clean it up, test it, then use it for a while if it works.

 

[grsthegreat]

Yeiks…that pump should have had a fuse inline to blow and prevent the heat build up. Thats scary.