Battery Charger with ACR

myoung84

Seaman
Joined
May 27, 2008
Messages
67
I just installed a Blue-sea ACR and picked up two brand new Interstate batteries, one starting and one deep cycle. Everything is working much better than the battery isolator I installed earlier this year. I have my starter and trim motor on the starting battery and my master power switch (depth finder, stereo, amp, etc) on the deep cycle battery.

I never used to put a battery charger on my batteries when the boat was in storage but would like to this year since the storage I moved to last year has AC power in each stall. I want to install an on-board charger so all I have to do is plug up the extension cord. My concern is, when I have a dual bank charger installed, wouldn't the ACR be activated all the time? Do they make a charger with a set of contacts than can lock out the ACR when the charger is plugged in? Or should I just not worry about it? The boat gets put into storage around early September and doesn't come back out until April. That seems like a long time for the ACR coil to be energized...
 

bruceb58

Supreme Mariner
Joined
Mar 5, 2006
Messages
30,454
Re: Battery Charger with ACR

You can do a couple of things. You can leave it and let the ACR combine when you have the battery charger on(I do that) or you can put a switch in the ground to turn off the ACR or a switch on the SI(starter interrupt) line to also turn off the ACR.

The disadvantage of putting a switch in to disable the ACR is that you may forget to turn it back on.
 

myoung84

Seaman
Joined
May 27, 2008
Messages
67
Re: Battery Charger with ACR

I think I will just wire a switch to disable the ACR. Might not be a bad idea to have anyways. It's not the end of the world if I forget to turn it back on.

What's a good on-board charger that won't break the bank?
 
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