trickle-charging my 98 Voyager

Since I don't drive my 98 Gr Voyager much in winter, I bought one of those
trickle chargers with the cigarette lighter plug-in to keep the battery
charged. I've tried it twice and all it does is drain the battery flat. Yet
the charger seems to work as advertised - it generates the promised 13 volts
on my multimeter. The battery charges fine with my regular battery charger
clipped to the posts, or when I'm driving the van.

The wrinkle is that both the front cigarette lighter and the rear accessory
drive plug are only connected with the battery when the ignition is on "run"
or "accessory". So both times I set the key to acc. I'm wondering if somehow
this prevents the battery charger from working properly. Does the relay or
voltage regulator screw things up?

There's nothing in my owner's manual about this. Anyone have comments?

 

With the switch in Acc. position, the acc. loads must be greater than
what the trickle charger is pumping in if your battery is getting
drained.

Your van does not have an option to have the cigarette lighter connected
with the ignition switch off? My '99 Concorde has that feature (set by
rotating the fuse for the jack to a different slot - one that's always
hot vs. a switched one. Myabe someone familiar with the '98 minivans
can chime in - maybe it doesn't have that feature - but look for that in
your owner's manual.

Bill Putney
(to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with "x")