Charge of Running Car Battery

[CKingsley08]

So i have 4 8s packs. I always go to the field with them fully charged. I have the astro flight a123 charger. It is a royal pain in the a$$ because it "detects" how man cells you have and frequently detects to little if you fly a bit too long. It will do up to 10cells and 8amps. I used to charge 4 to 6 times when i was running 7s packs. I now notice that while charging the 8amps the current slowly goes down with 8s packs. Kind of a pain. The charge time goes from 15 minutes to 30 when it does this. Will starting the car keep the amps pumping? My logic says yes but i don't want to burn out my charger. Mastech PS and generators look really cool but are just too much of an investment if my car will do the job. The vehicle is a ford edge 2008.
Thanks
Cameron

[ping]

No it won't, the charger is actually switching from continuous current mode to continuous voltage. A mastech power supply does exactly the same thing.

[CKingsley08]

It shows symptoms of a over loaded car battery IMO. The amps slowly go down, it doesn't switch over. Putting at a lower amp setting, 4 or 5 for example, and the amp number doesn't change throughout the charge.
Cameron

[JustPlaneChris]

I can't even charge my 7S A123 packs (TME Xtrema charger) unless I leave the car running, or it complains about the input voltage being too low. Actually, now that I think about it that may have been before I replaced the battery in my car...

Anyway, I don't see how running the car while charging could hurt the charger.

[CKingsley08]

That is what i figured. Thanks for the input Chris.

[muley]

My chargers ramp down too, as the charge progresses on the bigger packs, but I always figured that max watts dictated this. At 180 watts a 10s pack won't get 6+ amps for much of the charge, not even 5 at the end.