2019 F150 On-board Battery Tender

spookyghost

Dec 19, 2020 • 3 min read

Since COVID I started working from home, which means the only driving I really did was the 3 mile round trip to Home Depot every now and then.

I noticed my F150 stopped doing start/stop with the reason that the battery was charging, but it was doing it all the time. I suspect that the level of driving I was doing wasn't giving the battery enough time to actually charge back up. To add this, I often use the tailgate as a seat, which turns the lights on the an amount of time each time I do it, further worsening the problem

I decided I wanted to install a battery tender so I could just plug it in when I know it will sit for a week or two.

I decided on the NOCO GENIUS2D paired with the NOCO GCP1EX power inlet. Here is how it all came together

The unit is quite small, so I just had to find a place to mount it with the included hardware

I ended up drilling a single small hole in the metal frame and then attaching the bracket with a single screw right near the battery

I attached the positive to the battery terminal, make sure you disconnect the negative from the battery before doing this, or else you will have a lot of sparks!

Then I attached the negative to the ground spot the battery uses, this means all the current passes through the sensors on the truck and it knows what's going on

The cables are just about the right length, so I just zip-tied the excess

For the 120v plug, I wasn't sure where to run it. Its quite short, and its just long enough to fit down the wheel well, so I dropped it down there and zip tied it

Here is it plugged in

I figured that would be good enough, but I worried about the plug getting rusty, so I decided to get the power inlet too. Here is where I installed that