so buying a charger:-
screwfux have a 4A at £20 & a 6A at £30.
the 4A one is "not recommended for batteries over 50Ah" ?
(my borrowed charger has a "2A trickle charge" setting....)
So is that just marketing bullshit to induce me to buy the more expensive charger? or is there a basis?
Jim K
I would recommend getting a proper smart charger, like this
As it will also charge gel batteries.
Aldi/Lidl have them every so often.
its boll----
NT
But
So one person has complained they had a problem with one unit.
Which is not, so far as I am aware, the one Aldi/Lidl sell... And from a crappy supplier, it appears.
And I'll bet it cost a lot more than the Lidl unit. That's not to say the Lidl one is 100% reliable - I've had one fail. So keep the receipt as it has a three year money back warranty.
The thing is, the actual performance of the tiny Lidl one is actually better than some conventional chargers costing a lot more - and taking up several times the space. I have a Halfords one which says 11 amp on the front - yet the Lidl one charges a battery faster.
The Aldi/Lidl one is a constant current charger with voltage monitoring to control the charging process. You can select 0.8A or 3.8A charge rate (selected as motorcycle or car battery). It will then charge at this rate until the battery reaches fully charged voltage, and then steps back to a very much lower maintenance charge rate.
A conventional charger charges at the terminal voltage via a current limiting resistor (or sometimes using the power supply impedance instead of a resistor), so although it might supply 11A into a completely flat battery, as the terminal voltage rises, the current drops dramatically, possibly well below the 3.8A of the Aldi/Lidl charger, which is why it will take longer to fully charge. Some conventional chargers improve on this by charging towards something over the terminal voltage which will charge faster, but will also overcharge if you forget to stop the charging.
I have a couple of gripes with the Aldi/Lidl charger:
1) There's no way to configure it to automatically start charging when mains is restored. If it had this feature, it would make a very good basis for supporting mains failure battery supply. 2) It claims to have a restoration charging mode for completely flat batteries, but I've never got that to work - it ends up thinking the flat 12V battery is a 6V battery, and almost instantly thinks the battery is fully charged.
Yup.
The Halford one claims to be 'electronic' and certainly does have electronics, including the provision for charging SLA batteries. As well as switching itself off after charging - and having reverse connection protection. But seems as you say to reduce the charge rate considerably as the battery charges. Which means it takes about 24 hours to charge a battery so low it won't start a car. the Lidl one does it overnight. I did stick an ammeter on it, and the most it showed was about 6 amps with a very low battery. So I'd guess the marketing boys were out in force. ;-)
It would be useful - but then that's not what it's sold as. It would probably need to be made to a higher spec for this sort of use.
Not had the need to try it yet. I did have one battery so flat it wouldn't even switch on - but jumping another across it for a few minutes then allowed it to carry on charging after that was removed.
It is however sold as suitable to maintain a battery. The problem for me is that if there is a momentary power drop out, everything in my house that needs to restarts, except the charger. With cars out of use for lengthy periods (kit car and my wife's car when she was ill), the standing drain of security systems and the like then flatten the battery totally in about three weeks. I have lost two batteries that way.
It is probably better this way than auto re-starting though, as you don't know what conditions and dangers there might be if the charger restarted when you might have deliberately had the power off for some time and forgotten that the charger is still plugged in.
I have an old, non-smart charger for recovering "dead" batteries. It recovered both the ones that I finally lost a couple of times, before they finally gave up the ghost after yet another charger shut-off.
SteveW
There was a Mark of Optimate chargers which was dodgy. I think it's been sorted now.
As a long-term maintenance charger, the Lidl one works very well indeed, allowing for remembering to reset it every mains failure. I have a couple of batteries that owe their laid-up survival to the Lidl charger(s) - one 2001 battery was in my ex-Transit, which was off the road for the past two years, constantly on maintenance charge. It started up right away, ready for the buyer to look at.
+1 - very impressed with mine on a motorbike battery.
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