CTEK Charger Lights

[billyonemate]

Hi,

I have a flat battery so bought a CTEK charger to charge it.
It's had two red lights lit for the last 24 hours (see pic), the owners manual is rubbish, does anyone know what these lights mean ... does it mean it a charging ... or do they indicate a problem?



thanks

[LuS1fer]

Isn't it red while charging and green when optimal? That's the way my Accuguard works though it still showed green when the battery had died of old age.

[Dave^]

It's "Charging"...

At least the CTEK is in it's charging phase.

If the battery was totally flat, it may be too flat for the CTEK to charge, as they are a trickle charger/conditioner.

[ianrb]

Assuming they work in the same way as Optimates etc, let it charge for a couple of days. I have brought a deeply dead battery back to life that way.

[BelperJim]

I have the same charger. That means it's charging. When it's full it will switch over to the picture of a full battery. I believe it does various clever things I don't understand once the battery is full to keep it conditioned. I used to leave my Golf on it over winter and I never had any battery related problems.

[Puddenchucker]

What size battery are you charging? 85Ah?

[y2blade]

ianrb said:

Assuming they work in the same way as Optimates etc, let it charge for a couple of days. I have brought a deeply dead battery back to life that way.

That^^^

[billyonemate]

Yeah, it's an 85 amps, how long should it take to charge?

[AnotherGareth]

billyonemate said:

I have a flat battery so bought a CTEK charger to charge it.
It's had two red lights lit for the last 24 hours (see pic), the owners manual is rubbish, does anyone know what these lights mean ... does it mean it a charging ... or do they indicate a problem?

RTFM (pdf)

[billyonemate]

billyonemate said:

the owners manual is rubbish

[AnotherGareth]

billyonemate said:

billyonemate said:

the owners manual is rubbish

It might be rubbish but it tells you what each of the lights mean, it tells you that a particular light will be illuminated if the unit detects a problem, it tells you what range of capacities it can charge, and it gives an indication of how it will take to charge batteries of various capacities to 80% full.

You subsequently said the battery is 85 Ah and asked how long it will take to fully charge. The manual tells you a 75 Ah battery will take an estimated 17 hours to get to 80% charged.

You could reasonably infer that the manufacturer doesn't give more precise information for the time to fully charge a battery because it depends on a range of factors. Probable examples that come to mind include ambient temperature and general condition of the battery.

Edited by AnotherGareth on Saturday 18th May 13:29

[Digger]

I have almost the same charger. Just leave it connected for a couple of days. It's charging so should come back to life?! Nothing wrong with the manual leaflet that came with mine.

[billyonemate]

billyonemate said:

It might be rubbish but it tells you what each of the lights mean

When it first switched mine on the "half state" light was flashing for the first four hours - nowhere in the manual does it tell you what this means - after hours of scouring the internet i found the answer on a FAQ section of a new zealand website - at that point i lost faith in the manual - hence the "rubish quote"
http://www.cteknz.co.nz/FAQ/tabid/326/Default.aspx...

It also fails to tell you what colour the lights are going to be - will it be orange until the battery is half charged and then turn green when teh half charged state has finished, or does it just stay orange?

I think the manual is poor, but thanks for the input, i will leave it charge for a few more days and hope something changes colour.

[huwp]

Just been out to look at mine. The battery is charged - and the light is green. The light below under the image of the car is red.

I too bought mine to revive a flat battery; which it did after a while.

[billyonemate]

my battery has been on charge for 6 days now and still not charged... think it must be duff

[Dave^]

If you have some jump leads, you could try hooking up the "duff" battery to a running car (as though you were going to "jump start" the duff battery) for ten mins and see if that brings it back to life enough to allow the ctek to revive it...

[liner33]

Put a mutlimeter on it A) See if its charging and B)See what the volts are

Looks like a leisure battery and they do take ages but not 6 days

[Durzel]

Just to drag this up..

On Christmas Eve (great timing) I'm guessing my window motor jammed on because overnight the battery was completely drained. The car kindly let me and the neighbours know about this at about 5:30am with a blast of the alarm for about 5 minutes that I couldn't turn off.

Got jump started, pulled the fuse for the electric window motors because I didn't have any way of fixing it that day and did some last minute shopping and the car didn't seem to have any problems. Fast forward to Boxing Day and the car is dead again. Running multimeter across the battery shows a charge of around 4.80v.

I've stuck it on my CTEK MXS 3.6 but I'm not 100% sure it's working properly. Multimeter shows 12.50v and rising very slowly, but I've never seen the green light come on. Is this normal behaviour? Battery is an "Optima Yellow Top YT S 2.7" bought early this year, I'm hoping it will still be good?

[226bhp]

Durzel said:

Just to drag this up..

On Christmas Eve (great timing) I'm guessing my window motor jammed on because overnight the battery was completely drained. The car kindly let me and the neighbours know about this at about 5:30am with a blast of the alarm for about 5 minutes that I couldn't turn off.

Got jump started, pulled the fuse for the electric window motors because I didn't have any way of fixing it that day and did some last minute shopping and the car didn't seem to have any problems. Fast forward to Boxing Day and the car is dead again. Running multimeter across the battery shows a charge of around 4.80v.

I've stuck it on my CTEK MXS 3.6 but I'm not 100% sure it's working properly. Multimeter shows 12.50v and rising very slowly, but I've never seen the green light come on. Is this normal behaviour? Battery is an "Optima Yellow Top YT S 2.7" bought early this year, I'm hoping it will still be good?

When they've been completely drained and left hooked up to whatever drained them they are generally buggered.

[kambites]

Does your charger have a "recondition" function? If it does, use it.