Battery Charging

A bit of bad luck there mate.

How are the rest of the vehicle's electrics?

What sort of isolator did you have?

I hate alligator clips with a passion for the exact situation you faced. As a solution for all the batteries I use (truck/boat/camper) I run some tinned twin core marine DC cable, connected to the battery terminals at one end and at the otherend I place a two pin polarised socket (cheapie from Dick Smith does the job) and have enough cable to extend out through the grill or past the bonnet. On the end of the battery charger I place the corresponding plug and simply plug into the socket - no shorts ever and really easy to hook up to any of the batteries. Makes it easy for the Camper as I have mounted the socket outside and can just hook the charger up anytime without winding it up. When finished charging vehicle, just retract the cable and velcro/zip tie to other cables near by - too easy

Mark,

I have set up for charging similarly to Age. I found that I needed to have the battery charged from time to time, while I was working away and decided to make connecting the charger as simple as I could, for my wife.

I ran leads from each battery to all weather sockets, mounted in the the grill. A coresponding plug on the charger. No need to open the bonnet to fiddle with aligator clips, just plug it in and turn it on. To make it easier still for her, I attached a small length of shock cord to the cable, which could be hooked onto a fastener on the garage wall. If she (or I) forgot to unplug the chargerbefore backing out of the garage, the shock cord would pull the charger plug from the vehicle and safely suspend it out of the way.

This set up has also provided a very handy power outlet on the vehicle for running camp lighting, the portable compressor and a variety of other electrical bits and pieces around the campsite.

It's heaps better than those stupid clips.