I have a battery charger a friend gave me. I want to plug it into the 914 for the winter to keep the battery charged. Can you over charge the battery? I don't know if the charger has an auto shut off or not. Anybody ????

it all depends on your charger...

There are battery "tenders" made for that. I wouldn't leave a battery on a charger over the winter.

You should not plug in a charger and leave it unless it is designed for that purpose or it will overcharge. There are some smart chargers which trickle down when needed and turn stop charging when the battery is topped.

When you start cooking the "electrolyte" with overcharging, the "electrolyte" vaporizes off and exposes the plates...if you continue charging the plates will buckle, touch each other and short.

Check the Performance Products site. the have a 'tender' in the 30-40 $ range (IIRC) compact size, is comfortable between my battery and charcol canister. made by Shrader on something similar.

When you first start using your "tender", place a meter across the battery terminals to check the voltage, which should be 13.5-14v with the Tender hooked up. I've killed batteries with these things, including the brand-name "Battery Tender", which indicated it was charging when in fact it wasn't, and the battery was DIScharging through the tender. A few days later, totally flat battery.

Some of the Optima batteries can fool these things into providing a major surge of current when initially hooked up, as well. My reliable old 2A battery charger (not a trickle charger) will frequently trip it's internal thermal breaker when I first hook it up to an Optima, and will often cycle the breaker a few times until things stabilize and it delivers a steady 2A like it's supposed to. I'll not leave it on this charger for more than an hour or two.

If you disconnect the terminals on a fully charged battery, it should go for several weeks w/o losing its charge. Some batteries are better at this than others. Again, I've had good luck with Optimas going a long time w/o charging (2-3 months), and can be recovered with an hour on a normal charger at a low setting (1-2A).