rl153 wrote on 12/09/14 at 17:38:27:Thanks oldnSlow.what would it tell you if you hooked the voltmeter,just to the charger?
Interesting question. I have two chargers, both made by Schumacher.
One of them is just a charger, not a maintainer. If I check the output of that one without connecting it to a battery I get 12.35V.
The other one - which is the one that spends the winter connected to the bike battery - is a charger/maintainer. When that one isn't connected to a battery there is 0V across the terminals. So I guess if whatever circuitry is in there doesn't sense a battery, it doesn't put out anything.
That one has two lights on it. A yellow light that indicates that it's charging, and a green light that supposedly means the battery is fully charged and the charger is in "maintain" mode.
I've noticed that anytime I disconnect that charger, even for just a few minutes - I sometimes have to move the bike to get at something else in the garage - it takes a couple of hours for the yellow light to go off and the green light to come back on, even though I'm disconnecting and reconnecting the charger to a fully charged battery. I don't know how it figures out when a battery is fully charged, but this particular charger isn't smart enough to figure it out instantly. I've been using it for a couple of years now, and it hasn't wrecked a battery yet, so I guess it's as smart as it needs to be