Battery charger

[phorbiuz]

I'm trying to remember if PC have done a battery charger test lately?

I'm after one that would be happy to keep a camper leisure battery trickle charged for maybe a month or two at a time, plus the rarer but important car charge if needed.

Any advice appreciated.

[Luxobarge]

Hi,

No idea if there's a test recently, but I do remember that CTEK chargers usually score quite highly, and I have heard lots of good things about them.

Failing that, I have Halfords' own battery conditioners permanently wired in to 5 of my vehicles, which work perfectly for my purposes, never have a flat battery and it prolongs battery life. About £25-ish.

Like this:

http://www.halfords.com/webapp/wcs/stor ... yId_255205


HTH

[Topaz]

I use a CTEK charger for my caravan and have not experienced any problems - apart from the cost of buying it in the first place

However Aldi (and perhaps Lidl) have a very similar charger at a fraction of the cost but like most of their stock, it's only available in limited numbers at certain times of the year. I seem to recall the Aldi version had some good comments on one of the caravan forums.

Mike

[Luxobarge]

Yes indeed, our local Aldi recently had a load of super-cheap re-badged CTEK chargers, but my neighbour bought the whole lot before I could get there.....

(He has a LOT of cars....)

[phorbiuz]

Thanks for the replies. I've gone the CTEK route.

[tractorman]

I'm sure it has been said before but it's a good idea to disconnect the battery when you aren't using the car for a while as it won't discharge so quickly.

For example: my smaller tractor hasn't moved since August and I disconnected the earth lead. The battery wasn't fuylly charged as the tractor had only been doing local stop-start work in the summer A friend phoned yesterday and asked if I had a battery he could borrow as his tractor's battery had gone flat (it was quite frosty yesterday morning). I reconnected the battery, started the tractor and left it running for five minutes or so; until my friend arrived. He took the battery and started his tractor with it. I got a phone call last night to say that, once the oil was moving a bit, my battery had no problems turning the engine over. Mind you, he dropped the antifreeze and put hot water in the radiator to heat the engine a little!

He's fetching the battery back this morning and I will put it back and charge it up again. I'm hoping that I will actually use the tractor in a month or so (when the weather is a little warmer) as I have some drainage work to do - when I get the digger sorted and fitted to the other beast.

[Adam43]

Thanks for the replies. I've gone the CTEK route.

I use one of these. Not so fancy, but am happy with it.

I added an Anderson socket to the end and have another socket ore installed in several cars. Might be useful for you to use on other cars as well as your Camper? In addition I cut some jump leads up and installed sockets in that. Jump starting and charging are a dream. They charge £200 for that kind of flexibility on an SLS!

[megadethmaniac]

If the camper is being kept outside then what about a small solar cell charger. Only issue is having a permanently live lighter usually, and I suspect a camper has one or two of them.