Since I don't drive my 98 Grand Voyager much in winter, I bought one of those trickle chargers with the cigarette lighter plug-in to keep the battery charged. I've tried it twice and all it does is drain the battery flat. Yet the charger seems to work as advertised - it generates the promised 13 volts on my multimeter. The battery charges fine with my regular battery charger clipped to the posts, or when I'm driving the van.
The wrinkle is that both the front cigarette lighter and the rear accessory drive plug are only connected with the battery when the ignition is on "run" or "accessory". So both times I set the key to acc. I'm wondering if somehow this prevents my battery charger from working properly. Does the relay or voltage regulator screw things up?
There's nothing in my owner's manual about this. Anyone have comments?