Battery charging/optimate
Discussion
Hi all,
I've had the 968 hardwired to an Optimate for the past two weeks - today suns out & it doesn't start.
Guess the optimate may be faulty - although it only ever showed up as CHARGE & never moved up the range to the trickle state. Anyone seen this with an optimate before - it's been faultless in the past on a motorbike & two previous cars - 968 is quite recent.
Removed th battery & attached it to a dodgy looking charger from a neighbour & it shows half-full & is humming away. The battery is a Unipart & dates from 10/03 & states it has a 3-year guarantee (not that I have a receipt).
It also has 6 holes in the top - should I unscrew these whilst charging? Should I top up the battery with water? Can't see the level as it's a red battery & I don't fancy peering down the holes in case I get an eyeful...
cheers,
aa
I've had the 968 hardwired to an Optimate for the past two weeks - today suns out & it doesn't start.
Guess the optimate may be faulty - although it only ever showed up as CHARGE & never moved up the range to the trickle state. Anyone seen this with an optimate before - it's been faultless in the past on a motorbike & two previous cars - 968 is quite recent.
Removed th battery & attached it to a dodgy looking charger from a neighbour & it shows half-full & is humming away. The battery is a Unipart & dates from 10/03 & states it has a 3-year guarantee (not that I have a receipt).
It also has 6 holes in the top - should I unscrew these whilst charging? Should I top up the battery with water? Can't see the level as it's a red battery & I don't fancy peering down the holes in case I get an eyeful...
cheers,
aa
Suspect that much depends on the spec of the trickle charger / conditioner and the original state of the battery.
Porsches generally have heavy duty batteries and a lot of 'ordinary' trickle chargers aren't specified for them. Don't know about Optimate. According to the label on mine it wasn't up to coping with the battery it's attached to, but I'd have been happy with it maintaining a less than perfect charge ... as long as it didn't get any worse. However after between a week and a fortnight the charge l.e.d. went out and the condition light came on, so it just took longer.
Also these devices sometimes don't like any disturbance to the voltage profile and switch off or go to stand-by mode with any slight disturbance, if this happened at some stage it wouldn't be charging afterwards...then again maybe yours is an expensive unit that toggles back on again when everything settles down. Experience shows that even opening a door and getting the courtesy lights on is enough to do this with some units.
Most modern batteries don't need anything undoing to re-charge but there'd be no problem in theory, if the removal is easy and you really wanted to. Yes top up with distilled if any cells are below the rest.
However if the trickle charger is OK but there's a cell in the battery that's on its way out, it may not charge fully from any source and a new battery will be needed, time will tell. HTH. If not, maybe the Optimate is just broken like you suspect and I should've made a coffee instead
>> Edited by turbobloke on Sunday 17th April 17:29
Porsches generally have heavy duty batteries and a lot of 'ordinary' trickle chargers aren't specified for them. Don't know about Optimate. According to the label on mine it wasn't up to coping with the battery it's attached to, but I'd have been happy with it maintaining a less than perfect charge ... as long as it didn't get any worse. However after between a week and a fortnight the charge l.e.d. went out and the condition light came on, so it just took longer.
Also these devices sometimes don't like any disturbance to the voltage profile and switch off or go to stand-by mode with any slight disturbance, if this happened at some stage it wouldn't be charging afterwards...then again maybe yours is an expensive unit that toggles back on again when everything settles down. Experience shows that even opening a door and getting the courtesy lights on is enough to do this with some units.
Most modern batteries don't need anything undoing to re-charge but there'd be no problem in theory, if the removal is easy and you really wanted to. Yes top up with distilled if any cells are below the rest.
However if the trickle charger is OK but there's a cell in the battery that's on its way out, it may not charge fully from any source and a new battery will be needed, time will tell. HTH. If not, maybe the Optimate is just broken like you suspect and I should've made a coffee instead
>> Edited by turbobloke on Sunday 17th April 17:29
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