Battery Charger?

[Beach Advanced Member Find all posts View Profile Close Beach]

Can anyone recommend a good battery charger?

I have read good things about CTEK and Oz Charge, on the all knowing interweb.

Cheers.

[D4D Addicted PP Member Find all posts View Profile Close D4D]

Ctek or Projecta Intellicharge seem to be the pick at the moment. What battery are you wanting to charge?

[Beach Advanced Member Find all posts View Profile Close Beach]

Ctek or Projecta Intellicharge seem to be the pick at the moment. What battery are you wanting to charge?

Right now, the battery from my missus Pulsar. Its been sitting for a while and the battery is quite flat, but it would be good to have something that will handle bigger batteries as I will have a Prado soon.

[D4D Addicted PP Member Find all posts View Profile Close D4D]

OK 10-15A is a good general purpose size, your missus' Pulsar battery will probably be a wet battery so either the Ctek or Projecta will do. You can go smaller output, it will just take longer to charge.

[vk2ss55 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close vk2ss55]

I use a Jaycar 12A switch mode charger as I reckon 12A for that sort of money is good value .
Cheers Ross

[Madkore Avid PP Poster! Find all posts View Profile Close Madkore]

C-Tek for me.

Just plug in, select right setting and away she goes. Great top-up and trickle function, and can also bring some batteries back from the dead.

[Beach Advanced Member Find all posts View Profile Close Beach]

..............

[Beach Advanced Member Find all posts View Profile Close Beach]

Thank you for the replies.

By chance, one of my friendly neighbours has one of these:

http://www.ozcharge.com.au/store/12-...aintainer.html

I was a bit skeptical as its only 2amp max, but he swears by it and was adamant it would work, albeit slowly. It turns out he was right. When I turned it on last night it went into its "recovery" mode. This evening its indicating its charging. I put a meter across it and it shows 14.75V. I will leave it overnight and put it back in the car tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

I'm thinking this one might be the go for larger batteries:

http://www.ozcharge.com.au/store/12-...aintainer.html

[Dueler120 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Dueler120]

C-Tek 5.0. Use it to keep my crank and 105ah deep cycle ready to go when im away at work. Pure connect and forget setup.

[brogers Advanced Member Find all posts View Profile Close brogers]

"I put a meter across it and it shows 14.75V"

Just a comment FYI, and hopefully justto be somewhat helpful. A common mistake when checking a battery isto put a multimeter across the battery terminals to read to DC voltage. Unfortunately, this is generally a very unrelaible and incorrect way of actually testing the state of charge and the ability of the battery to actualoly start a car.

The reason is to do with "internal resistance" of the battery. When you use a simple multimeter across the battery terminals, the meter draws minute current, and you simply measure the voltage when the battery is not under any load. It can show quite a good unloaded voltage, yet when you go to crank the engine, it simply doesn't work well at all. if at all. When a load is drawn from the battery, eg by the starter motor, if there is an excessive "internal resistance" (ie the plates are stuffed or whatever) the voltage will drop dramatically as the load starts to be drawn from the battery...the "internal resistance" actually reduces the output voltage.

So what does this mean ....to test a battery correctly, you really need to do so while drawing a load, and thats why a car battery tester will use quite a bulky looking battery tester, and they dial up a load and observe how the voltage of the battery changes over a laod range and over a short period of time. Unfortunately, if the battery has been dead flat, and whilst it might be able to brought back to life for a while, it is very likely that it will be dead very soon... if not already....unfortunately wet cell car batteries don't like being flat..hence why some people use trickle chargers when not using a car for a while to ensure that the battery stays at the optimal state of charge. I keep my CTEK on the boat batteries when I don't use the boat, and it sits in "float" mode and ensures that the batteries don't get flat. Others on this forum will have lots of other useful information, but one thing is for sure...putting a volatge meter across the battery terminals won't really tell you too much about how the battery will actually perform after being run flat. A voltage meter can be good to see if the battery is actuallty charging at the correct volatge, or how the voltage is trending over time etc, but when it comes to actually starting the car, the current will flow into the load, and the internal resistance of the battery will come into play, and the voltage will drop and the car won't crank.... You could take your battery to a place that tests batteries, but be careful, as some battery places unfortunately don't actually know how to check a battery properly, and they can give you incorrect advice..as I found out when a battery testing retailer tested my cranking battery while insisting that the aux battery remain connected as well, hence didn't actually test the cranking battery by itself...he reconed that the battery isolater would ensure the batteries would not be connected when he tested the carnking battery, but this is not the case until the voltage of the cranking battery falls below a preset limit, and then it isolates the cranking battery...so I went elsewhere to get the cranking battery checked correctly. Also, you will find that some cars charging system don't actually fully charge your battery, so by putting the battery on a good charger every so often will ensure that it gets topped up, or reconditioned and this seems to prolong its life.