bazz54 Posted 7 February 2024 Report Posted 7 February 2024 I am retired now, and have two cars, so neither car gets a great deal of use in mid-winter. This is not good for the batteries, and in particular, the Gen7 (security system?) seems to drain the battery. Also, the "other car" has a set of winter tyres, so is used in preference if the weather is bad. My old battery charger needed "manual" disconnection when the batteries were fully charged, and there have been times when I've appreciably overcharged batteries, which are mightily expensive these days. Last autumn I bought myself one of the all-singing, bells and whistle CTEK chargers, and this has been the first winter I've had it. It's been a very good experience, knowing I could just connect it up and pretty much forget about it. I really didn't like the price, but I'm glad I bought it . I know people who have bought cheap smart-chargers on-line and have quickly come to regret it. I have no connection with CTEK and other prestige makes are available.
slybunda Posted 16 February 2024 Report Posted 16 February 2024 Got the lidl ultimate speed 5amp charger and seems to work well. My battery analyzing thing always says there has been some improvement to cca and internal resistance when battery has been left on the charger for 2 weeks.
bazz54 Posted 20 February 2024 Author Report Posted 20 February 2024 On 16/02/2024 at 08:22, slybunda said: Got the lidl ultimate speed 5amp charger and seems to work well. My battery analyzing thing always says there has been some improvement to cca and internal resistance when battery has been left on the charger for 2 weeks. I guess that has a "de-sulfator" on it? I bought a de-sulfator (as a separate item) many years ago, pretty much out of curiosity. It was a kit supplied by a small firm in Scotland. I very quickly decided that it really did work, and helped recover some old batteries. Batteries die through various causes and the de-sulfators only work on those suffering largely from sulfation, so they don't work on all batteries. I've only used the CTEK on good batteries so far, so have no feel for whether or not it is effective on sulfation. I've put my kit one on an oscilloscope to look at it's output waveform; must try that on the CTEK.
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