Hello locosters, hope you're all having a nice day!

As I drive my car to work every day (a pathetically short distance, what can I say? Having a car has made me a pussy!) it only drives a couple of miles between starts quite regularly and so does not get enough time to fully charge.

As I am currently not paying for my electricity in my house I was looking for a battery charger that can fast/trickle charge that is worth having and can charge in maybe a day. I don't really want to just leave the engine running for an hour, I'd rather use my landlord's electricity

There is an RAC one from argos which looks quite good but Littlehampton is the only place in the whole of the UK without one! I think it is £49.99 + £4 postage which is good, but are there any suitable ones for less?

I've just spent the day installing my DAB radio's antenna and went to try it and thought the radio was broken, nope, turns out I left the accs on

So what I'm thinking is it just needs a good full charge every now and then and I'm thinking periodically plug it in to trickle over night should do the trick. My dad does this with our families ford galaxy 1.8 TDI so it should definately work with a 1.4 206!

Recommend away!

cheers
Pete

take it a decent long drive once a week? or take the long way home?

How long do you think it would take to fully charge the battery? I heard from somewhere it takes atleast 15 minutes for the alternator to charge up the equivalent of one engine start

At least 15 to 20 minutes used to be the old rule of thumb for a cold start but these days of electronic ignition, fuel injection and geared starters it is probably a bit less.

As battery chargers I know from shopping for diagnostic scanners having the RAC logo on the box more than doubles the price of the same scanner bought from a UK seller from a UK eBay seller. The Lidl and Aldi scanners are good buys when available but you will find a lot of good battery chargers sold under thr Ring brand. You will find B&Q Wharehouse have a very decent selection of battery chargers by Ring and Torq.


As a rule of thumb you can size the amperage of battery charger required by dividing the capacity of the battery in amp hours by 12 --- ie a 6 to 8 amp charger is fine for a small to medium size petrol car. 8 + amp for a 2+ litre diesel or 3+ litre petrol engine.

For a motorcycle battery or for float top up charging 2 amps or less works fine.

Some of the larger B M Bargain stores have small 13 amp plug top float top up chargers for £8

The only thing I can really add to that is try and stay away from any that say 'fast charge' or similar. I've had better results from trickle chargers. It might need to be on overnight but it seems to give a 'better' charge, if that makes sense?

When I first got the car it would start the second you turned the key and it has slowly been getting slightly worse since.

When did it last get a set of spark plugs? even long life spark spark plus wear out.
I think perhaps you should do a cranking voltage test and charging voltage under load test. Basically the battery voltage should not drop below 10v when cranking the engine and the charging voltage should be within the range 13.5 to 14.9 volts at 2,000 to 3,000 rpm with the head lights on.
5w30 oil or 0w30 in the sump makes big difference to winter starting.

I was going to change em but I haven't got a haynes manual yet. Car came with no service history whatsoever so I don't know but it was cheap.

I've only had the car for a couple of months.

It's got 5W30 in it, it is what is recommended for it.
Running the voltage was over 14 volts, a guy at the motor factors over the road from work tried it when the battery flattened the first time!

It's a 2000 and it doesn't look like the kind of car that was looked after looking at the MOT history online, I think it failed more MOTs than it passed!

I would highly recommend the CTek range of chargers. I have the 25000, but the smaller ones will be fine for trickle charging. I use the big one when remapping as some cars (BMW's mainly) switch the engine fan on full blast when the ECU goes into write mode and it could be game over for the ECU if the voltage drops too much during the process.

eBay Item

^^ there's one on eBay going cheap!

Chris

Trickle chargers are LESS than 1 amp output.
For a Moto battery approx 500 Miliamps (1/2 a) max
An aggressive charger will eventually destroy one's battery.
AS does the Ubiquitous on board vehicle charging system. Primitive/brutal is their only descriptor.
Brochure Babble on battery chargers is legendary... Caveat Emptor

If not a trickle charger then use only a genuinely decent charger with capable monitoring electronics (= $$ :-)

On that note there are Desulphator circuits available for DIY, with build costs of ~10/15$ (google).
But it takes weeks to desuphate a messed battery.. So not an overnight fix by any means

[Edited on 2/12/12 by Bare]

That CTek charger looks just like my £12 Lidl charger which does a good job of trickle charging 6v or 12v batteries. I bought an Optimate 3 which does a desulphate and it revived a big old battery but it took 3 days before it went from desulphating onto charging circuit. The battery went on to a car and was still good when it sold 2 years later.

how much would you say that is worth chris?

The Bike It chargers are very good (not the cheapy one tho'!)

so how do I go about getting a lidl charger? If it is on the website will it be in store? It allows you to put it on a 'shopping list' but not buy it online.

quote:

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Originally posted by vanepico
how much would you say that is worth chris?

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Yeah you are right, it is identical to the lidl one, down to the number of lights and what it says on the button, i'll pop in at lunch time see if they have any in

I've had a Draper Intelligent Charger for a few years now.

Can't fault it, it even carries on charging after a power cut, no reset needed.

Keeps a battery topped up indefinitely.

Ended up getting the lidl one, it is charging as we speak