Trickle Charger

[M400DPC]

Can anyone recommend one, and where to get from?

Saw a gap in the clouds on sunday afternoon, ran out to the noble, turned the key and nothing... its only been 3 weeks since I last started her

[snuffy]

I have one of these:

http://www.theultimatefinish.co.uk/Store/Product/P...

Plus the cigarette lighter adapter.

[M400DPC]

nice one

[supergrass]

I did the same,went out for a run in the tuscan in the morning (shopping)went to take the noble out for a good blast pm flat batt. Been standing for two weeks.

[sean_goodman]

my battery was going flat every couple of weeks, it was the stupid time delay relay for interior lights which was drawing current all the time.

replaced it and no further problems.

quite expensive for a relay though, seem to remember it waas bout 40 quid from ford. could just remove it i supose if you werent bothered about interior lights or to test to see how long battery lasts without it in circuit

[joust]

If your battery is only lasting that long, it might be on the way out.

I can recommend these - they will not only keep it charged, but the Accumate will "cycle" the charge to sort out problems.

http://www.accumate.co.uk/

J

Edited by joust on Tuesday 11th November 22:48

[gizard]

snuffy said:

I have one of these:

http://www.theultimatefinish.co.uk/Store/Product/P...

Plus the cigarette lighter adapter.

these are outstanding

[S26VE P]

joust said:

If your battery is only lasting that long, it might be on the way out.

I can recommend these - they will not only keep it charged, but the Accumate will "cycle" the charge to sort out problems.

http://www.accumate.co.uk/

J

Edited by joust on Tuesday 11th November 22:48

Have one of these too.

[C&C]

joust said:

If your battery is only lasting that long, it might be on the way out.

I can recommend these - they will not only keep it charged, but the Accumate will "cycle" the charge to sort out problems.

http://www.accumate.co.uk/

J

I may be wrong on this, but after looking in some detail at both the Accumate and Ctek chargers, I came to the conclusion that both the Accumate and the CTek run a multi stage cycle to charge the batteries and maintain them in good condition without overcharging, or constantly trickle charging them, but as far as I'm aware, neither of them do a controlled discharge and then recharge of the battery to rejuvenate a damaged battery.

I think that both are excellent chargers, and finally decided on the CTek XS3600 as it came with a 5 year warranty as opposed to the Accumate which had a 2 year warranty. Would highly recommend the optional cigarette lighter adapter as this makes it dead easy to connect the charger every time I put the car back in the garage.

[joust]

The Optimate will ramp up the charging to 22V to overcome deeply discharged. As you should never allow a car battery to get to that state the Accumate is normally fine.

Both cycle the maintain, they do NOT continously charge it. Only by cycling the charge to be applied when needed will you keep a LA battery conditioned.

J

[C&C]

joust said:

The Optimate will ramp up the charging to 22V to overcome deeply discharged. As you should never allow a car battery to get to that state the Accumate is normally fine.

Both cycle the maintain, they do NOT continously charge it. Only by cycling the charge to be applied when needed will you keep a LA battery conditioned.

J

Ah - ok so the Optimate has a function to help recover the deeply discharged battery. Both the Accumate and CTek do the maintenance by cycling the charge only when required when the battery is almost fully charged.

Thanks Justin, I hadn't looked at the Optimate in much detail as I had thought it was more for bikes, ATVs, and jet-ski batteries, and so possibly not suited to car batteries?

[S26VE P]

Just been in the garage and i have the optimate. whoops, seems fine on min e tho.

[joust]

As the spec says Optimate is fine for anything 2.5Ah to 50Ah. That covers most "small" car batteries. As I've never had the requirement to look at a Noble battery I can't tell if you if falls into that range, although physically it's small so I'd be surprised if it's more than 50Ah.

Even if it is more, all that would happen is that the Optimate would slightly overcharge it (as it's internal impedance would be smaller), which wouldn't be a problem.

To that end any of these are fine for "top up", only if you were trying to fix a dead dead battery then the Optimate may help for smaller batteries.

J

[worty]

I've had a ctek for 3 years and its been plugged in to a connector near the offside air filter whenever the car hasn't been in use. No problems at all.

worty