Rough charge time.

[Dan7357]

Not used my car for 6-7 weeks, she had a new battery around 18 months ago.

I went to start it this morning and she is flat (as I thought she would be) not fully flat, still got light on dash ect..

Anyone know roughly how long a charge time will be ?? (standard Charger)

thanks

[trickywoo]

I'd go for a slow charge for at least 12 hours.

Be warned lead acid hates being flattened and it may well be fubar.

[Dan7357]

The battery is sealed, so hopefully not a leak on sight.

I will leave 6 hours to see how things go.

[McSam]

Dan7357 said:

The battery is sealed, so hopefully not a leak on sight.

I will leave 6 hours to see how things go.

As said, I'd definitely leave it for as long as you can be bothered, if it's too flat to start the car then overnight minimum - faster you charge it, the more likely it is you'll knacker it.

[Dan7357]

Becuase the car is in storage and they close at 8 it will have to be taken off by then.
Put on at 11(am) so she should get 9 hours.

If I take it off an hour early, will driving the car help out ?

[Huff]

Poster above is correct - SLAs have being deep-discharged. But being down as little as 10% is enough to not spin the starter fast enough for most ECUs to fire the injectors/attempt a start, and that's easily achieved if you've left it for 6wk with the alarm set (*very* roughly, say 1000 hrs at 20mA draw = 20Ah = 20 to 35% of a typical car battery capacity). So 9hrs at 2A will put about 3/4 of that back, ie 9hours on most chargers 'low rate' should put more than enough charge in the battery to get it started.

If you can then park it somewhere with power (or remove the battery -> home), it would do no harm to then trickle charge overnight.