Battery Maintainer/Tender and Battery Management System.

[Wings2Wheels]

I'm about to charge my battery after sitting for a couple of weeks. Looking at a chart it looks like its at 12.2 volts which equates to 60 percent.

My question for anybody that knows... is it possible to hook a tender to the Bronco without disconnecting the negative terminal?

In the Bronco owner's manual it states the following, and it sure seems like a lot to have to go through to keep the battery charged up.

Anybody have experience with this???

I have direct experience with exactly this situation.

Wife's Badlands SAS doesn't get a ton of driving time, and when it does, it is mainly local and doesn't give the battery much time to charge off the alternator.

After much consideration, I installed a Noco GenPro 10x1 battery charger/tender semi-permanently under the hood like so:

I ordered everything for the project from Amazon and McMaster-Carr. I utilized 'industrial strength' velcro from Amazon as my mounting medium to the top of the fuse box lid, making the unit removeable. The soft side is mounted to the fuse box, hook side to the bottom of the unit. To make the bottom of the unit smoother for mounting, I used a fresh razor blade slid under the rubber 'feet' to pry them off. I ordered some foam strip from McMaster-Carr w/adhesive on one side and cut three strips to install on the top of the unit as in the picture. This foam compresses when the hood is lowered, effectively 'trapping' the unit so it won't move in off-road/aggressive driving conditions.

I cut the hook terminals off the end of the charger, leaving the in-line fuses in place. I then soldered an in-line connector from Amazon in place to allow me to disconnect from the Bronco's battery and use some alligator-clip style clamps to charge other batteries if need be.

You can clearly see the in-line connector and excess wire neatly wrapped and zip-tied in the picture above. Additionally, the black heat-shrink connector mounted to the outside edge of the battery minder can be seen on the right.

The thick red wire with the black heat shrink is the positive lead for the charger mounted on the positive side battery bus. The thin black wire with red heat shrink is the power for the RockSlide Engineering steps.

Above is a photo from over the driver's side headlight looking back at the install.

I ran the 110V Noco charger cord down the front fenderliner, and hooked it through a heavy-duty zip tie that I only partially cinched to make a loop behind the driver's side recovery mount. I bought a weatherproof plug protector to mount on the end of the plug when it's not in use, and we simply plug an extension cord to the Bronco when it's sitting.

Zip tie is in the center of the picture w/the 100V plug through it.

The beauty of this unit is you simply select the mode button for 12V AGM battery type and the Noco unit will remember what you selected. So when you unplug and drive away, when you come back and plug it in it analyzes the battery then charges it as necessary. The Noco unit is also water-resistant, being made for the marine/water environment, so I don't worry about it dying because of water getting under the hood.

With this set up, everything is reversible/removable, but yet permanent enough to last a long time if we keep our Bronco a while (according to my wife, this is her 'forever' vehicle). With the in-line plug, I can still use the unit to charge other batteries.

A word of caution! If you do something like this, do yourself a favor and drape the extension cord over the driver's side mirror when it's plugged in. This will help remind you to disconnect the extension cord from the plug before moving the vehicle. I have a friend who had a set up similar to this and he inadvertently drove off with the battery minder connected with spectacular results. Afterwards, he made a red tag that hangs from his steering wheel as a reminder.

The battery is always strong now and we don't get any messages that the vehicle is going into hibernation due to low battery voltage. Feel free to take from my design and do what works for you.

Sponsored

 

[Owl]

Question... is there a reason you didn't use that unused post on the battery?

I don't know myself what that post is for, but it looks like an open unused post that could be used??? I've got the same post configuration on my Bronco.

 

[Wings2Wheels]

Question... is there a reason you didn't use that unused post on the battery?

I don't know myself what that post is for, but it looks like an open unused post that could be used??? I've got the same post configuration on my Bronco.

No particular reason other than it was easy to just zip off the existing nut, put on my negative cable from the Noco unit, and zipping the nut back on.

You could just as easily use a bolt/washer/nut combination on the open tab.

 

[XirallicBolts]

I have direct experience with exactly this situation.

[...]

I did the same thing, same location.
Welded up a stainless steel bracket at work to act as a mount. There's a bit of square tubing along the frame, that plus a bolt+wing nut in an unused fender hole for securing the bracket.

Gets a little too close to the hood but still no contact. Then 3d printed a bracket to use an RV receptacle in the bumper.

Draped the extension cord so you have to unplug it to reach the door. Of course I broke one of the cheap screws that came with the RV recep.

 

[Wings2Wheels]

I did the same thing, same location.
Welded up a stainless steel bracket at work to act as a mount.

<clipped for brevity>

Great minds.

Looks good, I like the RV receptacle.

 

[Herewegoagain]

I used to attach it with the alligator clamps at night during winter. I wasnt driving much. This season i might just bolt on a permanent lead.

ANYWAY, you can clamp the red pos lead to any available pos terminal space on the battery BUT for the Neg black lead you want to clip or bolt that lead to the far end of the battery minder attached to the negative terminal, so the charge runs across the minder. There's a metal tag to the right of this that I always clip onto.

Bronco has battery maintenance system that you don't want to bypass when you charge battery, that's why you don't charge directly to negative battery terminal.

Others can explain more. There's a video around here too I'll try to find

Thank you

 

[Herewegoagain]

I did the same thing, same location.
Welded up a stainless steel bracket at work to act as a mount. There's a bit of square tubing along the frame, that plus a bolt+wing nut in an unused fender hole for securing the bracket.

Gets a little too close to the hood but still no contact. Then 3d printed a bracket to use an RV receptacle in the bumper.

Draped the extension cord so you have to unplug it to reach the door. Of course I broke one of the cheap screws that came with the RV recep.

That's a pretty good idea! Thanks

Sponsored