The Lidl charger will charge my car battery - 70 amp.hr - from being flat enough to need external charging to fully charged overnight (say 14 hours). Just as fast as my conventional Halfords one which claims 11 amps peak. Which is also many times the size and weight of the Lidl one.
My guess is the Halfords one is unregulated, so the charge current drops considerably once the battery volts come up. The Lidl one bashes in the full 4 amps until fully charged.
Nowhere near the same chance of uneven charging.
Shall we continue discussing my other points, those you snipped, or are you unable to answer them?
Bill
Although you don't seem to have actually monitored and analyzed the charge rates, you are sort of right. The Halfords one will have a low no-load voltage to protect against overcharging. It's probably 13.8 or
14V. The drawback is that once the battery voltage rises the charge rate drops off a lot. (Charger voltage minus battery voltage) over (battery internal resistance plus charger internal resistance) means that by the time the battery is something like half charged the charge rate will be pathetic. Remember that a battery under charge will have 'surface charge' which means the voltage is higher during and immediately after charging that it really is.Two things have come to my attention recently that are relevant to this discussion. As a result of this discussion, in fact, I asked a lad I know who goes night fishing how he was getting on with his new 'intelligent charger'. He has a couple of 12Ah lead acids to power his lights. He told me that it appears to charge at the max rate of 4A for
12 hours then drops to a trickle charge. The timer is not adjustable for different batteries. His batteries were getting hot so he put a 12V bulb on the charger output to see what happened. The bulb was over bright for 12 hours then dropped to being a bit dim.The other thing is that one of the local aerial installers was here with a problem a few months back. He has a 75Ah 'leisure' battery at the back of the van to power his inverter, and the battery was hardly getting charged. Of course it's asking a lot anyway because he charges his tools from the inverter when he's on site all day then expects the aux battery to get charged on his drive home. That isn't going to happen no matter what. But it turned out that he'd linked the aux battery to the main battery via a long piece of 17/0.2 wire, with the volt sensing relay near the van battery. The voltage on the main battery when the engine was running and the lights on was 13.95V but at the aux battery (when fairly flat) it was only 11.4V. A length of big ass cable and cleaning the earth terminals fixed it. I would have preferred to move the battery to the front, but no, he wouldn't have that.
Much more recently, and this might interest those who use volt sensing relays for motorhomes etc, Paul had a problem last week with his relay opening and closing rapidly. It turned out that the aux battery was totally shagged; nowt wrong with the relay. You can figure what was happening.
Bill
The no load voltage is unimportant. High no load voltage can be useful with a sulphated battery. It might just remove the sulphation. As soon as the internal resistance of the battery approaches normal the voltage will drop anyway.
It will actually be zero. Due to the polarity protection relay. With no battery connected, the relay won't make so zero voltage from the charger.
Other thing is that modern 'sealed' batteries are are far less tolerant of overcharging since they can't be topped up. So chargers designed for them tend to taper off more quickly than once was the case.
I didn't see any point in my commenting on them. I don't have a scooter.
But the principle of two batteries in series is well enough known with some commercial vehicles.
Why?
Bill
Ah sorry. I thought you were professing some knowledge on the subject of battery charging.
Bill
Because the internal resistance of the battery changes - and the charger doesn't have a 0 output resistance and unlimited current capablilty.
You seemed to be referring to scooters only by mention of XLR battery connectors and soldering them or whatever.
If you have a general question you need information about regarding lead acid batteries and their charging, I'll do my best to answer it.
I went there yesterday afternoon, and there were plenty of them available, so I got one, and a torque wrench as well. The blurb that came with the charger describes how it will work as long as it detects a minimum of 3.8 volts, and will 'pulse-charge' it until such time as it reaches something sensible. Anything below 3.8 volts it regards as a dead battery. It will work on 6v and 12v batteries. It also changes to the trickle charge level when suitable. So it says that it does what I need it to do.
The 3.8v is probably the minimum the reverse connection relay will pull in at. If you have a battery where it won't, run another one in parallel with it with jump leads or whatever, and once it has made will probably stay made. You might find something like a PP3 will do it too.
Of course a battery which has been run totally flat may not ever be quite the same again, but may recover enough to be of further use in practice.
I'll stand by my comment that they are superb value and a decent little charger by any standard.
They are so cheap, I've build one in on the old car. With an external mains connector. So I can charge the battery without having to leave the bonnet open.
If it works as described, and doesn't fail, then I agree wholeheartedly.
I read elsewhere that you had done that, and I might do something similar on my car, so that the battery is always ready for a start whenever I want it. The engine doesn't like starting in winter, so it can drain down a battery that has been sitting for a while.
Plus in this case, a compressor (16.99) and half a dozen large free range eggs (89p). The charger and compressor were so small, as compared with older models at least, almost toy sized, that it was easy to miss them at first.
michael adams
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I don't know anyone else who has to routinely charge their car battery.
Bill
It depends on how much or little the car gets used. Most have a quiescent draw from the battery these days. I fitted it when still working, and being a hobby car might not get used for weeks. Don't need it now as I use it far more often.
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