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Backup Power

Here is my auxiliary power station/Jump box

I am in the automotive industry, we commonly use commercial jump boxes. These jump boxes never seem to last very long, and I usually pull the AGM batteries out of them and use a float charger to recover the batteries. I have 2 17-18ah batteries, and one 7.5 ah that I have recovered from jump boxes that would no longer work.

The common failure point is the chargers that come with these boxes, they use cheap chi com wall wart charges that tend to fail or overcharge the battery. My jump box had the battery charger go bad, and someone at work dropped the box and broke it. People just have no respect for other people's stuff and it is tough to lock up a box while it is charging.

So the idea I got was to recycle the parts from my current jump box, use my trickle/float charger externally since it was a batter charger, and add a Powerpole panel so the box can be used as a backup power source for my radios.

Here is the box I put together,

The box is a plastic "Ammo can" from Northern Tools, it contains a 18ah battery, I installed the volt gauge from my jump box and used a spare switch to control the gauge. The cigarette lighter socket was also recycled from the jump box, it give me the ability to use my memory saver for vehicles, it plugs into the diagnostic port of the vehicle and powers the computers memory. I added some banana plug jacks out of my junk box and added the power pole outlet to charge the main battery and to power the radio's when using it as a backup power station.

As you can see in the power pole goodness I added a set of 175 amp power poles that go to the battery clamps, this allows me to take the clamps off for using the power station, and it allows me to lock the clamps in my tool box so the jerks at work cannot use the box while I am not there.

I have to say I love these power poles, I am usually a cheap bastard, and the first time I saw the "poles" I thought they were a little pricey, but comparing them to the molex connectors they are actually quite cheaper and much better option.

Here is my second backup system

It is a 34ah Sealed Lead Acid battery I picked up from radio shack, this was suppose to be my main battery backup for Hurricane Irene, the plan was to have a backup for my radio's and to have a battery to run a fan at night. I have equipped the battery with a 400w power inverter.

This is the newest rebuild of the jump box, the 35ah battery was added to the box.

Several Years and still going strong. Using a battery tender to charge this thing, I have jump started hundreds of vehicles with this setup, and the box and 175 amp power poles are going strong.