Maintaining personal car's battery while you're driving OTR

I’d get a solar charger and leave it on the dash .

 

Any car after 1981 has a computer that draws power.

Throw in abs and bcm and tcm. That's 4 modules. Plus your radio and alarm.

Not a good idea to disconnect. Safety precautions are needed with today's electronics.

My car gets a rough transmission every time the battery is disconnected. It has to relearn itself. Then needs a timeout. When the dealer warranteed my battery. The car had 7 extra miles when I picked it up.

 

I can tell you this. We used a battery disconnect switch on our trucks when Covid hit. After 5 months of sitting they started right up. I believe in disconnects.

 

Yes because it's fast and easy. That said keep jumper cables in your tractor and use it to jumpstart anything you need.

Unless you're in a dinosaur it's all just 12v, unless you hook to a wire from the inverter lmao that might get rough.

 

just buy a higher capacity battery. everytime you disconnect your battery, it takes a few seconds to a few minutes for the computer to recognize (or re-learn) the settings all over again. that can be a PITA.

also, if you have any issues with the car and you get a malfunction (or check engine light), that'll reset that as well, and start the cycle of your car's problems all over again, and potentially damaging something, since you don't get it fixed.

the voltage and amperage taken while the car is turned off, is minuscule at best.

you most likely have a crappy battery right now.

 

My car has stability control that uses steering wheel sensors etc to detect if you are going sideways into a ditch. Quite a few owners on the forum I follow have reported steering error warnings and other shenanigans when the battery died or was disconnected. Sometimes these errors went away, other times they required a computer reset.

I wouldn't disconnect the battery on a modern car if it wasn't absolutely necessary.

 

I use a solar charger like Roundhouse stated , plugs into cig lighter 40$ on Amazon

 

How new of a car are we talking here, anything less than 10 or so years old should be able to park for a month and crank right up without any issues.

 

Get a solar maintainer from Walmart or Amazon. Its a solar panel smaller than a carton, not a pack, of cigarettes. Put the solar panel up by the windshield defrost vents and plug into your cigarette/12 volt outlet. Or just get one of the small hand-held 12v jump starter devices.

 

Newer cars have parasite battery drain from certain electronic doo-dads. The newer & more expensive, the more certain they are using your battery while it is parked.