JDgreen
Lawn Addict
- Joined
- May 14, 2010
- Threads
- 248
- Messages
- 2,887
I went to Sears last week and purchased a pair of small 2-amp trickle chargers to keep my ATV and tractor batteries charged this winter. The devices are a small box type charger that plugs into a wall outlet, and they have a two wire pigtail that attaches to three different shorter pigtails that are connected to your battery.
The three types are: A pair of smaller ring terminals that are a perfect fit for my ATV battery, or probably most other yard tractor batteries, or motorcycles. It took me ten minutes to remove the battery cover on my ATV and attach the terminals. The second type is a cigarette lighter plug, and my John Deere has no lighter socket. The third type is a set of spring battery charger type clamps. For those not familiar with JD utility tractors, on most of them the battery is concealed behind the front grille, to access the battery on mine, I have to remove two pins, fold down the hood guard, raise the hood, remove two spring loaded D-tabs that secure the grille at the top, and raise the grille, unhook the headlight wiring....then I can access the battery. Since the lighter plug method wasn't an option, and the spring clamps would have to be removed and reinstalled every time I wanted to hook up/unhook the battery tender, I decided the ring terminals were the best option.
The ring terminals were too small to fit my battery terminal clamp bolts, even enlarging the holes with a Dremel didn't work. And of course the short length of the pigtail meant removing the grille every time I wanted to attach or detatch the tender. I finally cut the lighter socket off the pigtail, spliced it into the ring terminal pigtail with crimp connectors, and replaced the ring terminals with larger ones, wrapped the wire connections with black tape, then the whole assembly with split wire loom, cleaned the batery terminals and installed the now long enough pigtail. Guess what? The grille fits so snugly to the engine side panels there was no place to route the wiring...I ended up drilling a 5/8 inch hole thru the center of the grille at midpoint, feeding the wiring thru that. Looks great, works fine, but how does what should be a ten minute job take three hours?
And guess what? While getting the half inch wire loom at the local Meijers, I happened to spy a package that was an "add-on lighter socket...for about 6 bucks more than I paid for the wire loom and ring terminals, I could have added that socket instead...and it would have been so much easier and more convenient. :frown:
The three types are: A pair of smaller ring terminals that are a perfect fit for my ATV battery, or probably most other yard tractor batteries, or motorcycles. It took me ten minutes to remove the battery cover on my ATV and attach the terminals. The second type is a cigarette lighter plug, and my John Deere has no lighter socket. The third type is a set of spring battery charger type clamps. For those not familiar with JD utility tractors, on most of them the battery is concealed behind the front grille, to access the battery on mine, I have to remove two pins, fold down the hood guard, raise the hood, remove two spring loaded D-tabs that secure the grille at the top, and raise the grille, unhook the headlight wiring....then I can access the battery. Since the lighter plug method wasn't an option, and the spring clamps would have to be removed and reinstalled every time I wanted to hook up/unhook the battery tender, I decided the ring terminals were the best option.
The ring terminals were too small to fit my battery terminal clamp bolts, even enlarging the holes with a Dremel didn't work. And of course the short length of the pigtail meant removing the grille every time I wanted to attach or detatch the tender. I finally cut the lighter socket off the pigtail, spliced it into the ring terminal pigtail with crimp connectors, and replaced the ring terminals with larger ones, wrapped the wire connections with black tape, then the whole assembly with split wire loom, cleaned the batery terminals and installed the now long enough pigtail. Guess what? The grille fits so snugly to the engine side panels there was no place to route the wiring...I ended up drilling a 5/8 inch hole thru the center of the grille at midpoint, feeding the wiring thru that. Looks great, works fine, but how does what should be a ten minute job take three hours?
And guess what? While getting the half inch wire loom at the local Meijers, I happened to spy a package that was an "add-on lighter socket...for about 6 bucks more than I paid for the wire loom and ring terminals, I could have added that socket instead...and it would have been so much easier and more convenient. :frown:
