You don’t need to charge car batteries frequently if you use your car for daily city driving. But when you own a high and long-performing vehicle for longer drives out of the city and back, you may need to check whether its battery needs charging from time to time. Nothing kills the early weekend mornings’ long drives out of the city than a dead car battery.
There are different car battery chargers you can use to bring your car back to life. For this article, however, we will look into the trickle charger. Here, we will try to answer the question, how long does it take to charge a car battery with a trickle charger?
What are the different kinds of chargers?
There are three kinds of car battery chargers. They are the 40-amp chargers, trickle chargers, and smart chargers.
Also called the 200-amp chargers that mean jump starts, the 40-amp chargers are the quickest way to bring your dead car battery charged back to life. There are, however, risks to using the 40-amp chargers to jumpstart your car’s dead battery back to life. Battery overload is one such risk.
It’s a common problem when one uses the 40-amp chargers as they are usually unable to shut down the charger in time when their cars are working again. Worse comes to worst, your car’s battery may even explode when battery overload becomes a common thing when using the 40-amp charger.
Next, we have the trickle chargers. This kind of charger comes in two different sizes of amps. You have the 1-amp chargers and the 2-amp chargers.
Compared to the 40-amp chargers, the trickle chargers take time to bring back a dead car’s battery to life. If you choose to use the 1-amp trickle charger, it may take you up to 24 hours to completely charge the car’s battery. Meanwhile, it only takes half of that, 12 hours, to fully charge a car’s dead battery using the 2-amp trickle chargers.
While quick charging with the 40-amp charger often causes battery overload, this doesn’t happen when one uses the 1-amp and 2-amp chargers to recharge cars’ dead batteries. It is the most efficient to have the 2-amp trickle charger so you can charge your car’s batteries in just 12 hours.
2-amp trickle chargers just cost more than the 1-amp chargers. You may have to shell out more money to have one of these in your garage. But if you don’t need to charge your car’s battery that often, a 1-amp trickle charger may be the better trickle charger for you.
Smart chargers are the most convenient to use when you need your car’s battery fully recharged without having to worry about it overloading. They charge batteries just as quickly as the 40-amp chargers. They also are as safe to use as the trickle chargers.
Smart chargers automatically adjust the power output needed to charge batteries in a given timeframe. This way, you don’t have to worry about your car’s battery overcharging. Smart chargers are a good investment. They are, however, pricier than the 40-amp chargers and the trickle chargers.
Will a trickle charger charge a dead battery?
Yes, trickle chargers can charge dead batteries. But compared to 40-amp chargers, it takes time to recharge dead batteries with the 1-amp and 2-amp trickle chargers. It takes 24 hours to charge a dead battery with a 1-amp trickle charger. Meanwhile, you can bring back to life a car’s dead battery in 12 hours with a 2-amp trickle charger.
Smart chargers cost more than trickle chargers and 40-amp chargers. If you need a more cost-effective car battery charger, it may be wise to invest in trickle chargers. You can spend less with a 1-amp trickle charger despite the 24-hour wait you may have to contend with when charging your car’s battery with it. But at least you don’t have to run the risk of overloading your car’s battery like when using the 40-amp chargers.
There is, of course, always the choice to invest in the 2-amp trickle charger to cut your charging time to half that of 1-amp’s 24 hours’ charging time.
How long does a dead battery take to charge?
How long it takes to charge a dead car’s battery depends on the kind of charger used.
If you need your car’s battery recharged in two hours or less, you can use the 40-amp chargers. If you have time to wait for your car’s battery to be fully charged, you can choose to use either the 1-amp or 2-amp trickle chargers. If you want the shorter charging time of 40-amp chargers and the safety that trickle chargers offer, then invest in a smart charger.
💡 Just know that smart chargers cost more than the other two.
You can decide which of the three different car battery chargers suits you best by looking into how regularly you need your vehicle’s battery charged. Also, look into how safe these chargers are for recharging your car’s battery. No one wants their car’s batteries to overload and explode with frequently jumpstarting it with the 40-amp charger.
Conclusion
It is best to invest in a battery charger that is cost-effective and safe to use. If you are using the charger, say, at most, once or twice a year, you will be good with the 1-amp or 2-amp trickle chargers. You don’t have to spend a lot on the 24-hour long charging 1-amp trickle charger for at most one to two uses of it a year. But if you have a higher budget for a battery charger, you invest in the 12-hour long charging 2-amp trickle charger.
There’s no need to spend so much on a smart charger when you have 12 to 24 hours to spare to charge your car’s dead battery at least once or twice a year. A 2-amp trickle charger is enough to recharge a dead battery for your next long drive on weekends out of the city. You should invest in one of the two trickle amp chargers for your garage should you need to charge your car’s dead battery from time to time.