<OK, I'll snip all the bits that the troll probably isn't replying to>
Assuming you are referring to the fixed battery harness, that's still a tenner out of the basic price that adds value to the product whilst making it more useable to more people.
Alternatively, you might be comparing the price between an Optimate 2 and a Ctech clone but again you are aren't comparing like with like (no surprise there).
With the Optimates, you just plug them in in any order and you don't need to press any buttons to have them work as desired.
Berts Mrs accidentally turns the charger off at the house end and turns it back on again and doesn't mention that to him. 2 weeks later, assuming the car had been on maintenance charge he finds out that it hasn't been because no one went back out to press the button (that also seems to be a design weakness).
That is a problem with the Lidl one. If you had a power cut or whatever, it needs to be reset.
I have one built into the old Rover since they are so cheap. Waterproof mains plug under the rear bumper so it can be left locked up.
But the chances are I'd want to look at it anyway, to see the LEDs are showing what they should. And, of course, it has plenty output to charge a battery quickly.
Until you 'flashed' the dynamo and swapped the battery round to make it -ve earth? I think I did that on one of our oldest MM's? (No radio to bother about).
;-)
Yeah. I sorta preferred it that way round as the vehicle being the -Ve made sense from a wiring POV (although may be the reverse from an electron flow POV). ;-)
The convention in the US had already moved to negative earth. The UK was one of the last to change.
Two reasons come to mind:
1) A positive earth and negative wiring loom meant little or no corrosion on the wiring.
2) The ideal potential on the spark plug central electrode was negative, which meant for positive earth the coil could be an autotransformer, where the primary back emf added to the overall output voltage.
A kind thought, thanks. But Watson - a proud and practical car owner in one of the last stories - would have foreseen the potential problem and never let the battery go flat in the first place.
In the 50s, car radios were valves. They could be used either positive or negative ground, as the vibrator didn't care. But there were early transistor car radios that could be altered from positive to negative ground. Either by solder links, or a slide in connector strip.
Didn't really make much difference to car electrics of the time. Series wound motors don't care about polarity, and things like the heater and windscreen wipers used them until permanent magnet types became common.
I just (2.50pm, Monday 13th) checked the battery again. Yesterday at 11am the reading was 14.4V; today it's 12.6V. The car hasn't been used in the interim.
Is that sort of drop to be expected or is the battery indeed faulty?
Right, thanks. It will interesting to see how things stand tomorrow: I suppose either the battery has settled contentedly to twelve-and-a-halfish volts or it will continue to drop...
certainly that 14.4v will vanish really quickly I THOUGHT that a fully charged battery was a bit over 13V. Mm 13.2V is regarded as 90% charged I'd put that charger on again
Our cars spend most of their time below that since we stopped commuting and neither has yet failed to start due to battery. Batteries usually last until 8+ years old.
A modern car battery will be under a constant low load (known as a parasitic load) because of all the electronics that are left on these days.
What you often see is something like this:
You are driving about with no heavy loads on (rear screen heaters, headlights, blowers etc) and the battery will be held at around 14.V by the charging circuit.
You turn the engine off and leave the car. The electronics will go into a primary shutdown where the load on the battery with be higher than after some time where the electronics go into sleep mode, drawing very little current.
All the time the engine isn't running and the alternator spinning the battery will be being discharged.
The issue is the capacity of the battery, the charge state when left, the parasitic load and the time left.
In the winter the capacity of the battery will be lower so the time will be less (and the loads likely to be higher).
Even if you disconnect the battery, lead acid batteries can have a reasonably high 'self discharge' rate (~4%/week), meaning the battery will go flat when simply left on the side.
So, to counter this you need to either:
Run the car often enough to ensure the battery never goes so low as you can't start the engine (ideally sooner than that threshold). To make that period longer you can either fit a bigger battery (more capacity), keep the battery warm (retaining the capacity), reduce the parasitic load (not easy) or ensure some level of external charge is applied before the battery drops below a certain capacity threshold (certainly 50% for even a real traction battery, let alone an SLI (Starting, lighting and Ignition = Car) battery.
So, going out and attaching your mains charger once every n/x (where n = the shortest time before the battery become too low and x = a reasonable safety factor, like 2), leaving a mains powered maintenance charger on 24/7 or , if the circumstances allow leave a solar panel in the vehicle somewhere that will produce slightly more power over an average day over the time before the battery than is drained from the battery over that same time (the worst case being in the winter).
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