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As mentioned above, issue of connecting a run down battery to fully charged one is overrated.. There will be high current flow for a brief period of time, but it tapers down rather quickly. But you certainly don't want to skimp on the size of the wiring between the two. And you want the sysem to disconnect the parallel contection when the vehicle is not running.

We deal with commercial batteries one of which has an 11,000 amp short circuit capability (1700AH & weighs 6500lbs) and we have had to parallel those into old systems with weak batteries. No problem as long as you know what you are doing.


Yep, no different than hooking up a set of jumper cables. I like the single solenoid setup, it works very well, it is very simple, very flexible and very reliable. In normal operation, I just leave the switch in the automatic-on position and everything just works like stock. Only when I kill the main battery do I need to flip the switch to the jump start position and then start up the engine. Now, if I ever get all my auxiliary loads re-wired to run off the 2nd battery, I may not need to even mess around with that, since I should not be killing my main battery any more while camping.