I thought shore power was to supposed to also charge the battery?
Posted by DepressedDragonBorn@reddit | Truckers | View on Reddit | 17 comments
Came to the truck this morning and realized I left the lights on, so I plugged in the shore power and left it for an hour. The battery has yet to charge, does shore power not charge the truck battery and only runs the truck outlets?
Disastrous-East-1143@reddit
I just jump my truck with my car... i know you're not supposed to. I just wedge something to keep the accelerator pedal down at 2500 rim for 15 mins and BAM... ready to go
DepressedDragonBorn@reddit (OP)
Yeah, no way I'm risking my car for a company truck. Lol
mvamv@reddit
Jump starting a semi truck with a car doesn't risk anything to the car, the batteries are the same voltage. Just takes a while to charge all 3 or 4 batteries enough to get a crank start.
Disastrous-East-1143@reddit
I'm not a company driver
lulzzors@reddit
Sure it’s shore power and not the block heater?
Mine works through the eaton factory inverter, the inverter is the one handing the shore power and converting 120 to 12v. Doesn’t do a great job of charging the truck batteries, but it will fully charge the house batteries behind the cab.
Plugged in I was showing 13.4v last time I checked, on the dash.
HowlingWolven@reddit
Only if you’ve got a truck with an inverter charger.
DepressedDragonBorn@reddit (OP)
Turns out I do, it was slow to charge but I got it running after two hours. The more you know.
_Aech_@reddit
Just guessing here, but my truck has 4 batteries with who knows how many CCA and I doubt an hour would be long enough to charge them from dead to high enough to start my truck. You'd almost certainly still need to jump it.
mvamv@reddit
It's roughly 900 CCA... per battery.
_Aech_@reddit
Ugh, that's rough. Hopefully OP's batteries can simply be charged back up and be OK, I don't even want to find out how much it costs to replace a set of those. Glad to be a company driver.
mvamv@reddit
There's no need to replace them if they're dead from a voltage drain. They just need to be recharged, via trickle charge or jump start. Only time they need replacing is if you see the batteries leaking gas that smells like rotten eggs, or you see they are swollen on the sides.
ChiDaddy123@reddit
Draining a lead acid battery to “dead” absolutely can be a reason to replace them. When they are fully discharged it changes the chemical reaction in the battery and leads to a state called sulfation, where lead sulfate crystals begin to grow on the plates inside the battery which increase the internal resistance of the cell, as well as reducing the overall charge they can hold…
One time can be enough, and any additional extreme drain events just compound the issue. That’s what causes the “rotten egg” smell. The sulfur containing lead sulfate crystals…
If you’re gonna make a statement, make sure you actually understand what’s happening chemically within the battery before you make it. 🤔🤷♂️
DepressedDragonBorn@reddit (OP)
Yeah, waiting on road repair, just kinda of surprised, I thought shore power was also to charge a dead battery.
_Aech_@reddit
I think it will charge the battery(ies) eventually, but it will take several hours to do so.
DepressedDragonBorn@reddit (OP)
It did, two hours of wait and I got the truck on.
_Aech_@reddit
Good to hear! Probably don't shut it off for a while so they have time to charge. It would suck to get to the middle of nowhere at a customer's dock (or the fuel island) and not be able to start up again.
Antique_One7110@reddit
Depends on the truck.
Also, most block heater ports won’t charge the batteries so ensure you’re using the correct port if it will charge them.
Most only charge around 40 amps, consider you’ve got probably >2000 amps of battery; depending on how much you drained them, could be a couple of days before it’s recharged.
All of this is based on my truck, your configuration may be different.