Finally listened to you all and got a cheap charger at Walmart, 6A charge maintainer, microprocessor controlled, 72W 6amp fast charge 4A medium and 2amp slow 6V/12V automatic.

Hooked it up and let it sit over night. In the AM the remote unlock didnt work so I knew it wasnt charged. Looked at the charger and it said full charge. I unplugged it and tried to start it, dead. Reconnected, put back to fast charge, it started...the fan revved higher and higher then shut off. I unplugged and reset, put on slow charge, fan stayed low reve so I left it for 2 hours. Came back, said full charge, but was dead.

Gonna take the cheapie back today

Get yourself a big ol' bastard like this -

Finally listened to you all and got a cheap charger at Walmart, 6A charge maintainer, microprocessor controlled, 72W 6amp fast charge 4A medium and 2amp slow 6V/12V automatic.

Hooked it up and let it sit over night. In the AM the remote unlock didnt work so I knew it wasnt charged. Looked at the charger and it said full charge. I unplugged it and tried to start it, dead. Reconnected, put back to fast charge, it started...the fan revved higher and higher then shut off. I unplugged and reset, put on slow charge, fan stayed low reve so I left it for 2 hours. Came back, said full charge, but was dead.

Gonna take the cheapie back today

I have the marine version of that battery charger and it serves me well..

maybe you have a bad battery.

Sounds more like a dead cell in the batery than something being wrong with the charger. The thing wit a battery that has a dead cell, you will read a fully charged voltage, bur as soon as you try and draw any current the voltage can drop Down to almost zero

mine always worked well.

can you leave the batterys in the car and charge them all together? Or do you have to disconnect and do them all individually? I just disconnected the rear 2 and have them charging together in case the van has a leak/draw so theyre separated from the vehicle circuit now...will try that over night.

I charge all of mine at once

Haven't seen you in a while, welcome back.

pulled all three batts and brought them in, charger is on the starter batt, it kicks in for a few mins, then off for a few, I'll keep checking with the DMM...hope I'm getting somewhere!

Haven't seen you in a while, welcome back.

been hiding out, thanks for the welcome!

Looks like it could be a badd battery. I have to run some testing on mine. Gotta charge them overnight soon and see if everything is ok with mine.

Is that battery realt reading 7 volts?! I'm not even sure you can recharge that without a high amperage charger

so theres a little trick to getting completyely discharged AGMs to start taking a charge. The charger has 2 ways of shutting off, sometimes as soon as it starts charging the cooling fan gets louder and louder till it clicks and stops charging for a bit..then it kicks back in for a while and shuts off again, other times it thinks/says the battery has a full charge then you have to disconnect then reconnect until it kicks off again, process repeat. Once the battery gets a small charge then the process stops or becomes much less frequent and then it takes over a day to get over a 12V charge. So far I brought 1 battery back to life, the 2nd large 100aH is now starting to take charge...hasn't kicked off for a while. Tomorrow I will try to get the little starter battery going again.

Good luck. Sounds weird.

Sounds like you have bad batteries or a weak charger. I have 4 Odyssey deep cycle batteries for my boat that are 7 years old that are drained on a weekly basis during the summer. I use an Intella Power 60 amp converter and they charge back up every time.

Looks like the batteries might be sulfated and or overly drained. If they stayed that way too long they could be ruined. I use a powersupply set to 13.8 to 14.2 volts when batteries are that low and many times won't start taking a charge for several hours then I switch it over to a CTEK charger after they start taking a charge. You must watch for heat and do not let them go off a powersupply unless you are there to check as a badly sulfated battery can over heat easily and also damage the powersupply. If it gets hot stop the charging. If you hear venting stop the charging.

A battery maintainer is not a charger it can do more bad than good to the batteries. I was about to go that rout also but read the instructions in the store.