Car charger

I’m the kind of guy that forgets to get all his batteries ready before he goes to the track, so I was looking for a way to be able to charge my batteries in the car on the way to the track.

My SUV has an AC plug, so I was able to plug my Duratrax Onyx 245 dual charger into it and charge on the way to the track, but I could only do one battery at a time.  It would reset itself every time I tried to charge two batteries (5A each).

It seemed inefficient to convert the car’s DC output to AC (through the car’s inverter) and then back again from AC->DC in the car charger, so I looked for a way to get straight DC output.

The cigarette lighter supports up to 120W on my car and I found this neat little adapter for banana plugs at my local Fry’s electronics store for $5.  The DC input on my charger used alligator clips, but I chopped them off and put on Protek 4mm banana plugs from amain.com.

This works out well and now I have a really nice and clean DC->DC charge on the way to the track and can get two batteries ready in about 30 min.  It’s the simple things in life…