When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Sometimes my truck sits long enough that I receive notification from the app that remote access is being disabled to conserve battery power. The last time this happened I attached both charger leads directly to the battery. I later learned that I bypassed the Battery Management System, resulting in weird voltage readings. I charged the battery directly again to 100% then reset the BMS. The voltage readings are now normal.
There doesn’t appear to be any beefy chassis grounds near the battery for the negative clamp. Looking closer at the ground assembly on the battery I think I can use the metal piece with the hole in it (see photo). Google tells me the FOMOCO black box under that piece is a BMS sensor.
Is that the best place to clamp the ground from the charger?
Good call thinking about a battery maintainer, this will solve a lot of issues that people see commonly. I also like your thinking about where to connect it. I'm not convinced you hurt anything connecting right to the battery but your chosen location is slightly better for the reasons you state.
Good to know. I had a bad battery that I replaced a couple years ago. I had to reset the BMS to get it to act right.
I also put a battery tender on if I'm not gonna be driving it much. This is pretty rare, but I've gone on a couple longer vacations (one over 3 weeks) and having a tender was key to keeping things right.
I just replaced the original 14 month old battery with a Costco Interstate. It will be interesting to see how often the truck disables online access compared to the old battery. This truck was a courtesy vehicle for a local golf tournament in March 2025 then sat on the dealer lot until I purchased it in late July 2025. Who knows what the original battery has been thru.
I replaced my four year old battery with an H7 from Costco, which provides a bit more CCA etc than the H6. Wasn't convinced enough to go to H8 (which was used on the diesel version) as it only offered minimal extra CCAs over the H7.
