How To: Battery Charging, Long Term & In-Car...

[motordavid]

TrueX5er inquired about my long term, "sitting" X5 firing up, after its
winter sleep...it did, poifectly!

So, I thought I would do a pic thread showing how I did a long term,
in car, battery maintenance deal:
-I used a 10 year old Battery Tender with alligator clips for Pos & Neg.
-I used a cheapazz mechanical lamp/appliance timer that I bought at
Lowes. I like the mechanical version, the one where you turn out the
little plastic nubs, better than the "electronic" ones that are in the mkt.
-I simply attached the Battery Tender alligator clips to Pos and then to Neg,
under the hood, (see batch of pics for location orientation and pos/neg ground
under hood contact points).
-I ran the 'gator clip cord along "hood seam" out under hood, and connected
BattTender unit cord to appliance timer and plugged the appliance timer into my garage outlet.
-I set the appliance timer nubs to make the BattTender "come on" once per week for 14 hours,
thinking that would bring battery to full tilt boogie and then it would "float" the rest of the time.

The only down side is that having the BattTender connected to the appl.timer, the Tender would
not come on until that once per week period came around on the calendar. I thought that was
"better" than having the BattTender keep the battery "charging and/or floating" continually for 5 full months.

After sitting for 5 months and 5 days, in an unheated and potentially very cold, north facing garage here at
our Mtn House, the X5 fired up with the turn of the key.

The battery is oem and 5 1/2 years old and I know it is on borrowed time; but the sumbitch works and I'll cop
a new battery when I'm in the mood for the 40 mins crawling in the back forty of the X, to swap it.

Your mileage may vary and you may have a better method, but this battery charging/maintaining worked for me!
BR,mD

[cmyX6go]

Glad she fired up MD!
OT - You unceremoniously turned 6000 fookin posts, congrats! And I love your new avatar.

[noncom23]

Nice work. Good write up.

[ncx]

Excellent and informative post, MD. This is something that seems to keep coming up over and over again. Very helpful to some of the battery-charging-wonderers out there.

Glad she cranked, and I bet she's glad to see ya.

[dmlgc]

Great post, nice pictures.
I don't have the issue but it seems to show up a lot here.

Thanks

[trueX5er]

excellent tips, nice photos! I'll take it into consideration when I store my X5 in the garage during the summer.

[TQ2K]

Thanks for the post MD! Now I know what to do for next winter. Let's just say the M5 didn't start-up when it was time to end the hibernation.

[alpac]

Great post David Thanks for the tip