treetops

I intend to connect the spare battery in parallel with the bike battery when I ride. It will be housed in a milk crate I have strapped to the rear platform. It will have a 12 volt female lighter plug permanently connected. And I would connect it to the bike via the bike's auxillary plug pig tail male lighter socket. At nite, I will take it ino the cabin and plug it in the inverter using the same lighter connector. I will bring it in to the cabin as temperatures outside may be down to 10F which will lower the battery output. Not sure I will need the battery isolator as I will not let the spare battery get below 11.0volts while running the cabin lights. So I don't think I will have problems starting the bike in the morning. But I will try it and use the isolator if neccessary. Thanks for the tip. Yesterday I hooked up 2 100 watt CFL spiral light bulbs (which use a total of 50 watts) to the inverter and then to my spare car battery. The initial battry voltage was 11.9V. Ran the lites for 6 hours and the battery had only dropped to 11.4v. This is perfect for my needs. And will end up being a great solution for lighting at nite if it works!! Now the question is.....will the bike charging system have enough poop to charge the spare battrey over a 6 hour drive time?? Anyone have any idea?? Intend to do a dry run this weekend. Thanks to all who replied. Please chime in with any thoughts!!

I will be off in the woods for 2 weeks without electricity or generator and want to use the bike charging system to recharge a 12v utility battery I use for lighting in camp. My idea is to run the utility battery down to 11.0volts (while lighting at nite), then connect it to the bike battery during the 5 - 6 hours I would be riding during the next day. I am hoping it would come close to being fully recharged during that time. Bike is a 1997 Explorer 400 4x4 with a new battery. Anyone any idea how well this recharging would work and/or if this would damage the bike charge system?? I would try it first with no lites or accessories on. Also thought it would be good to allow both batteries to become kind of voltage balanced (battery leaching)before starting the bike to reduce the initial charging. load.