Tuesday, Sep 06, 2011 at 09:27
Just doing that will work quite well Oz Doc, you don't need any "fancy regulators"
Have always felt that camper batteries are wrongly proportioned, the bigger capacity should be in the car.
In an ideal world a big capacity step up type charger thats runs off the cars 12v to maximize power transfer when idling is the way to go, as car alternator soon drops charging volts down , however the real issue is not to get the
battery up to 100% but rather to prevent them from going flat and so a 1/2 hours drive works really well even from the alternators reduced volts when warm.
(espically if your sneaky and turn
fridge to max 1/2 hour before you start the car)
The only caveat here is that the car must be able to generate > 13v on idle.
In my case I can up the idle speed if required.
On the gennie side - you already have your 240v charger, but if ever you get the chance its worth getting the biggest charger you can. They are expensive though.
I have used cheap computer type 30amp power supplies which really charges quickly however I wouldn't generally reccomend this as unless monitored properly you can overcharge.
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