> Does anyone have any experience hooking up a heavy duty battery (from my
> John Deere 350B Crawler) to a trickle charger? The reason is that this
> equipment doesn't have a glow plug warmer and it takes a ton of cranking
> to start in cold weather. I would like to keep the battery topped off for
> that reason.
Haven't tried it, but it should work fine. Better than a trickle charger
would be a "battery maintainer" that implements a multi-level charge.
Basically you don't want to charge the battery all the time, only when it's
state of charge drops.
> (Also, is there a better way to start this equipment? I was
> thinking starter fluid, but it's a diesel)
Diesels love starter fluid, many diesel tractors have an external fitting
just for the purpose of supplying ether during cold weather starting. I've
seen engines that had to have starter fluid even after they were running,
until they were warm enough to heat the intake on their own.
> On another note, my loader has 2 batteries. Can I hook a trickle charge
> up to that? If so, do I hook them up together in parallel?
> of series? or do I use 2 chargers and remove the batteries from the
> loader?
If they are 12v batteries, most likely they are connected in parallel to
keep a 12v system. But it's definitely worth checking first, as it's
certainly possible to use a 24v system. If they are 6v batteries, they're
most likely connected in series to give 12v. As long as your
charger/maintainer matches the system voltage, you should be able to charge
them in place. (24v units are available, but not on every street corner.)
However with parallel-connected batteries, it might be worthwhile to
disconnect and charge them independently occasionally.
Randall
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