Charging the Battery on a Towed Vehicle While Towing It

Updated 07/05/2018 | Published 07/03/2018

Question:

Our towed vehicle occassionally arrives at destination with dead battery usually in heavy stop n roll traffic. Do they make a wiring harness for lights and signals that also trickle charges the toads battery? If so, do other modifications need to be made?

asked by: Julie P

Expert Reply:

To keep a maintenance charge on the battery I recommend using a harness such as # BX88206 with the tow bar wiring you will be using so that you can run a wire from the connector at the front of the toad to its battery.

There are a couple of ways to do this. First, you can tap into the running light circuit in the tow bar wiring but to provide power to the battery the RV running lights would have to be on all the time. Or if the connector at the back of the RV has a working 12 volt circuit you could use that circuit instead.

Whichever way you choose you would just attach the wire to the appropriate corresponding pin at the back of the connector that will be at the front of the truck and the other end of that wire will go to the positive battery terminal.

expert reply by: Michael H