Thanks all.

Based on what everyone wrote, I've been looking for an "automatic" battery
charger. I checked Harbor Freight and one person suggested.

Here's the instruction manual for one Harbor Freight battery charger:

http://www.harborfreight.com/manuals...6999/66783.pdf

On Pages 8 and 9 of the manual, it talks about not leaving the charger on
and the possibility of the battery overheating with the charger on. So, I'm
a little confused. Does the automatic shutoff actually work or not?


"BetaB4" wrote in message
...
I posted a question in the newsgroup "rec.boats" about recharging a
lead-acid battery for an electric boat motor after returning from a
boating/fishing trip. The original question was about whether it's okay to
leave the battery charger on for a few days to a week. I found out that,
unless I have the more modern automatic type of battery charger, that is a
bad idea -- due to overcharging the battery.

Then someone suggested just plugging the battery charger into a timer and
setting the timer to turn the power off to the battery charger after say
12 hours.

My question now is,

"If I do the timer idea, could the fact that the battery charger will
still be set to "ON", and will still be connected to the battery after the
timer cuts power to the battery charger, cause the battery to discharge
and drain back through the battery charger?"

I tried a Google search but didn't find too much info that I could use.