Flat Battery - best course of action?

[Ozzie Osmond]

Toltec said:

I bought a CTEK MXS10 a few months ago, it happily charged a battery my old CTEK 3600 wouldn't. Sometimes brute force and clever technology really works.

Just buy a new battery. Far better than fannying about with any other nonsense. Just because a battery can be brought back to life doesn't mean it's been restored to viable condition.

And as for those who say charging at home is better than just driving the car; are you serious? What do you think is charging the battery of 99% of the cars on the road? I'll wager it's an alternator....

[Garvin]

Ozzie Osmond said:

. . . . . And as for those who say charging at home is better than just driving the car; are you serious? What do you think is charging the battery of 99% of the cars on the road? I'll wager it's an alternator....

Yes, of course the alternator charges the battery. I think the points being made are that a) it takes the alternator more than an hours drive to fully charge a very discharged battery; b) the alternator doesn't have the necessary charging cycles to de-sulphate a near dead battery; and c) driving around for the necessary hours to fully charge the battery is expensive in fuel and personal time just to get a battery back to rude health, and without the overcharge necessary to recover a sulphated battery (which old and highly discharged batteries tend to be) it is a complete waste of time, effort and money.

[Toltec]

Ozzie Osmond said:

Just buy a new battery. Far better than fannying about with any other nonsense. Just because a battery can be brought back to life doesn't mean it's been restored to viable condition.

And as for those who say charging at home is better than just driving the car; are you serious? What do you think is charging the battery of 99% of the cars on the road? I'll wager it's an alternator....

It would be a bit expensive to replace the battery every time it got too low to start the car. Even driving around just to charge it costs a lot more than using a charger every now and again. Multiply that by several cars and changing batteries is going to get very expensive.

[S0 What]

Ozzie Osmond said:

And as for those who say charging at home is better than just driving the car; are you serious? What do you think is charging the battery of 99% of the cars on the road? I'll wager it's an alternator....

To fully charge a battery on the vehical would take a fair bit of time and fuel, at home it may take longer but it's cheaper and you can do the housework, watch TV, do the washing ect ect
Look at it this way, we are allways being told there are too many cars on the road (which there is !) and you are advocating taking a drive just to charge the battery when you could be at home, less pollution, less cars on the road (for no real reason), not saying it's not viable to drive to charge but frankly it's easyer and cheaper to do it at home and IME and IMHO it's kinder on the battery to give it a trickle charge at home.

[paintman]

This from Optima batteries may be of interest:
https://www.optimabatteries.com/en-us/experience/2...

[MitchT]

Toltec said:

It would be a bit expensive to replace the battery every time it got too low to start the car.

Well, not in my case as this is the first time it's got too low to start the car since it was installed around nine years ago. Anyway, I'm going to replace it as its age suggests I've done very well.

[kainedog]

If you're car is you're daily either the alternator or battery has or is on its way. If you've had the car 5 years plus it's just one of those things . I had a Hilux once and that had two batteries and the alternator screwed them both and I'm not using my merc much lately and it's battery has given up the ghost due to lack of use.

[eliot]

Deeply discharged batteries should be charged slowly and for a long time. The charging current should be no more than a 1/4 of the ah rating, so a 50ah battery would be charged at 12amps.
Pumping in 20 or 30 amps can only be achieved by increasing the charge voltage which once above 14.4 volts is just going to shag the battery more through overheating it.

Dumb chargers are no good, get yourself a smart charger - they set the charge voltage correctly and limit the current.

I've got a ring Rsc6012 smart charger which goes through the correct stages of recovery, absorption and float charging. They can be left connected as well, which is handy for occasional garaged weekend cars.