E350 trickle charge

[F1bNorm]

The 2006 Ford E350 has live (key removed) cigarette lighter (2) sockets in the dash. Shouldn’t I be able to trickle charge the chassis battery through that outlet?

Thanks!

[Gjac]

It depends on the wiring size. Most cigarette lighter sockets have very thin wiring going to the battery. On mine I could not run my laptop from it so I installed a another socket with thicker wiring directly to the battery I can now run my laptop and charge the chassis battery with a 5 amp charger. The socket is live all the time so the key does not have to be on the charge the chassis battery.

[F1bNorm]

Thanks for the responses! Been using a 10watt solar panel on the coach batteries and it works really well. 10w isn’t enough to keep up while camping, but is fine for maintaining charge while in storage. The panel sits on the dash and is plugged into one of the coach outlets.

I tried it on the chassis, through the dash and it didn’t seem to be working. I thought there might be a diode in the circuit. It is a very tight fit for the plug so maybe I wasn’t making contact, or I didn’t wait long enough to see an increase in voltage. 10w isn’t very much juice!

I’ll try again and report back.

Thanks!

Norm

[Harvey51]

77rollalong wrote:
check the owner manual, some you can change the position of the fuse so the lighter is powered all the time

Good idea! The first thing I did with our new 1992 GM van was to move the wire going to power windows to an always on fuse. My family really appreciated being able to open and close windows without running the engine, particularly when camping in it. Of course everything electrical is trickier to modify now.

[77rollalong]

check the owner manual, some you can change the position of the fuse so the lighter is powered all the time

[docsouce]

I apologize for the off topic question. I have en E350 also and I get power on the drivers side cigarette lighter outlet but no power on the passenger side outlet. I've looked all through the owners manual and tried turning on all of the interior switches but I can't get it to work. I would like to get access to the wiring but that looks like Id have to pull the console apart. Any suggestions would be appreciated. It sounds like yours works so I thought I'd ask. Again sorry to be off topic.

[pianotuna]

Yes, and mine are connected to the chassis battery. I did choose to use a Trik-L-Start unit. So my chassis battery charges from shore power and/or solar.

[MDKMDK]

Yes. If they are connected to the chassis battery.