LIDL battery charger again

[richardxjr]

paolow said:

richardxjr said:

Bexhill? They had about twenty on Sunday.

Lidl gets theirs in on Monday http://www.lidl.co.uk/cps/rde/xchg/lidl_uk/hs.xsl/...

Yeah - thats the one. I went, collected it and plugged it in. Battery shows a voltage of 6.0v but when I click the mode button it charges in 6v mode for a second and then goes back to just indicating the status of the battery. Not sure if its not happy with the battery or whats going on?

Is it a 6v or 12v battery? The instructions are pretty concise, but if your 12v battery only has 6v then it's pretty shagged!

[paolow]

Yeah - its a 12v battery at a state of almost total discharge. I've a feeling it will (might) 'come alive' again after a good cycle - I'll charge it on jump leads or similar for a bit to give it a head start and then try the cycle charge on the Aldi charger!

[V8A*ndy]

Can the Lidl items (branded Ultimate Speed) be connected to the car directly for winter storage or does the battery needs to come out?

[F1 ASBO]

richardxjr said:

(the Aldi one)

Plug it in, it just displays the voltage
Press 'mode' to go into charging (it automatically works out if 6v or 12v)
12v:
Motorcycle mode: 0.8a charging until full then it will monitor at a tiny trickle to maintain around 13.5v
Car mode: 3.6a charging until full then similar monitoring/trickling
Winter mode: something similar but for temps <0degC.

Can anyone please give me the technical explanation as to why only 0.8a for bikes and 3.6a for cars please? I have a road legal track day car which has a bike engine (GSX-R1000) and is fitted with an Odyssey PC545 battery (https://www.demon-tweeks.co.uk/motorsport/batteries/odyssey-extreme-racing-20-battery-pc545) so it's a car but with a bike engine and a battery that can and is used in either! I am never sure whether to set my Lidl charger to car or bike mode

Cheers!

[jkh112]

My understanding is that with conventional batteries the motorcycle ones are so small that they could be damaged by a high charge rate and so a lower rate is preferable whereas the physically larger car batteries can take a higher rate. The battery on my motorbike is certainly a lot smaller than those on my cars.
Your battery is not really a conventional one so either play it cautious by using the lower rate or find out what charge rate it can take. Either way, as long as the charge rate is higher than your discharge rate the battery will be kept topped up.

[F1 ASBO]

Excellent thank you. Pays to be cautious at least to start with I guess.

[AW10]

Do have a look at what Odyssey recommend as far as charging goes. I think AGM batteries charge at a slightly higher voltage than conventional lead acid cells.