Foretravel Owners' Forum For owners and Fans of Foretravel Motorcoaches September 21, 2025 ...

easy way to charge toad battery

May 29, 2016, 03:00:24 pm

If you need to charge a battery, in my case a motorcycle battery, you can easily connect it to the terminal on the bottom of the master switch in the fuel bay, and ground it to the ground wire on the propane pipe. Put some big alligator clips on either end of two 10 gauge wires to charge the battery with. Be sure to get the polarity right (duh) and don't let the positive wire touch anything or you might have an exciting electrical fire. The battery will be charged in no time. I've charged a bunch of motorcycle batteries this way. You can probably fit the motorcycle battery inside the fuel bay so you can close the bay door. A car battery would be too big to fit inside my fuel bay though. I've never actually charged a car battery this way but aside from leaving the bay door open during the charging it should be the same. I always take the motorcycle battery out before I drive my coach because I don't want the positive wire to touch anything when I go over a bump... I dunno if there's even one person on this forum who will find this idea useful but I sure use it a lot.

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Re: easy way to charge toad battery

Reply #1 – May 29, 2016, 08:58:56 pm

Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather not be messing with battery charging inside the propane compartment.  Sure the chances of a spark are low as is the chance of a small gas leak, but both have been known to happen.

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Re: easy way to charge toad battery

Reply #2 – May 30, 2016, 01:55:07 pm

The danger is the hydrogen gas escaping from the battery as it's being charged. There's no way to avoid that, which is why the coach battery box is vented. The charger is right above the battery box, where the hydrogen gas would rise to... so in short the coach has much more "built in" danger of explosion than what I'm introducing. It's much safer than charging the motorcycle battery by setting it on top of the battery box and connecting it where the boost solenoid is, which is what I used to do until I did some thinking about this. If you're carrying a portable battery charger none of this matters, just use your portable battery charger if you have AC power to plug it into. I haven't been carrying my portable battery charger with me and suddenly found myself towing an electric start motorcycle for a change. I was carrying a kick start motorcycle previously and had no use for a battery charger until recently. I'll probably get my portable battery charger the next time I stop at my storage unit if I still have the electric start motorcycle... anyway, if you don't like this idea then don't do it. There probably isn't one person on this forum that this idea will benefit (except me) so I don't know why I even posted it. I do this all the time and it works great.

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