problems with Lidl smart Car Battery charger - anyone else?

[jkn]

Hi All following recommendations here I bought one of the 'smart car battery chargers' from Lidl last year. The first couple of times I used it it seemed fine. I've had occasion to have to recharge the car battery a couple of times during the recent weather and have had problems. I'm wondering if it's me ... or if the thing is not working properly.

Basically the unit goes back to 'idle' mode - with just the main 'standby' LED on - after a few seconds/minutes. If I press the mode button again the LEDs start advancing to the selected mode (light/ normal/heavy duty etc.), but then the unit is likely to immediately flip back to standby.

A bog standard 'dumb' charger goes into charge mode rather than top-up mode. When I last tried & failed to use the Lidl charger, I measured the battery terminal voltage beforehand at ... oh crumbs, not sure I can remember. Either 6.9V or 9.6V ;-/

If the charger is screwed and I can find the receipt I will take it back for replacement or refund under warranty, but since it seems a good unit and they ren't on sale at the moment I thought I'd check here to see if any of this sounds familiar...

Thanks J^n

[Adam Aglionby]

Thats the answer afraid, cold weather is bad for elderly people and lead acid batteries.

9.6V is at least one dead cell in battery, smart charger is rejecting it dumb charger will just try and put over 14V into it anyway.

Cheers Adam

[terry]

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6.9 or 9.6 volts on a nominal 12 volt lead-acid battery?????? e.g. a 6 cell car battery?????? Something wrong? That low a voltage, especially if measured with no load (i.e. open circuit except voltmeter) usually indicates a battery that is completely flat (discharged). Maybe battery so seriously discharged, or faulty, that the charger cannot cope? Was battery left in discharged condition for a long period? If so it may be beyond use? Just a suggestion based on.. Have had something similar trying to reactivate dead cordless tool batteries (not lead-acid) of various voltages. The 'smart chargers' for that tool/battery pack act up but can sometimes be tricked into trying to recharge the battery pack. Whereupon most of the battery packs are found to be too old and beyond use.

[jkn]

Hi Adam

That makes sense, and I was wondering if the battery was sh*gged. I was actually quite surprised how well it behaved after recent charge ... was half-expecting problems.

Looks like it might be a new battery this weekend ;-(.

Cheers J^n

[Harry Bloomfield]

on 14/01/2010, jkn supposed :

At that low level of voltage it is normal for the Lidl charger to assume the battery is faulty and not attempt to charge it.

[Jules]

In what way? I didn't think they provided as much power when cold - but I'd always heard that lead-acid cells have a shorter lifespan the *hotter* the climate...

(our daily-use car, with 170k on the clock, still has its original 12yo battery - I've always put that down to the fact that it's sodding freezing here for half the year)

[The Medway Handyman]

Elderly people don't provide that much power in hot weather either.

:-)

[jkn]

Hi all FYI, having just charged the thing up with the dumb charger, I measure the off-load voltage as 12.8V. From a bit of reading (my knowledge of lead-acid batteries seems to have faded...) this seems about right for a battery in good condition.

From previous comments here it does seem likely that the battery is at fault. But I'm curious about the failure mode - is it likely for one dodgy cell to be failing when discharged (giving rise, in part, to the

9V6 I measured earlier) but measure properly after a dose of electrons?

I realise that my reading doesn't imply it's going to stay at 12V8 under load...

On a related point, any tips for suppliers of good quality batteries? Previous ones for this car (ye anciente 306 XSi phase I) seem to have had a tendancy to discharge if the car is left for more than a few days, which I used to put down to a high quiescent current drain from my old-ish CD player. But I'm wondering if I should actually check the drain current with the ignition off, and look for possible sources of a high drain.

Thanks J^n

[Harry Bloomfield]

jkn laid this down on his screen :

That is about right.

You can only tell by measuring the voltage across each cell individually, which is made a not so easy thing to do on a modern battery.

Again that is technically, not an easy thing to check - I know, I tried. The current consuming items tends to gradually go into low power sleep mode over the first 30 minutes or so after switching everything off. The last thing my car turns off is the remote control receiver after 4 weeks of being left undisturbed.

Generally you should be looking for it consuming less than 30mA after the 30 minutes, but any disturbance of the 12v supply will wake everything back up.

My problem was my car battery being randomly flat, which seemed to point to something not shutting off, but I was unable to find anything at all. I put a new battery in which partially fixed it, followed by a new alternator because the old one was slightly below spec.. I have had no problems since then. The old battery seemed to test out fine off the car.

[Adam Aglionby]

Cold will kill a marginal battery, the SG of the electrolyte drops and if its really cold can freeze solid, guess in marginal cases enough ice crystals to short plates.

Had 3 vans that have needed new batteries on or near shortest day, this year Mum`s car ate its battery on Christmas Day, Halfords are actually reasonable and open Boxing Day.

Cheers Adam

[Adam Aglionby]

Used to be habit of a certain large Fast Fit centre to use a battery load tester, like a 12V electric fire, a bit excessively to persuade a customer they needed a new battery after the vehicle wouldn`t start after being `tested`

As previously mentioned battery in me Mums car died on Christmas Day, save having to find the itermittent alarm fault now, batteries can a sometimes bit annoyingly live on in a living dead type manner.

Cheers Adam

[Steve Walker]

I'd just see how things go. My wife was ill for a lengthy period and couldn't drive. I kept swapping the smart charger back and forth between her car and my kit car, but then forgot for a bit; went on holiday; forgot for a bit longer. When I remembered, her battery was dead, wouldn't even bring the engine management light on properly. The smart charger refused to charge it, so I gave it overnight on the dumb charger, then finished off with the smart charger and left it trickling for a while. Amazingly it recovered quite well. It didn't hold a charge for quite as many weeks as before, but was fine once she was driving again. She's since been ill again and a combination of neglect and cold weather finally killed it off after another 12 months or so.

SteveW

[Dave Liquorice]

Aye, had a couple of car batteries give up the ghost when the weather starts to get colder. One I could tell by the air temp how well (or not) it was going to start the car. On a cold morning it would struggle, next day a few degrees warmer and it would be fine.

[Jason]

This happened to me recently with a Halfords smart charger. Turned out it was simply detecting that the battery was duff, and sure enough the batter failed completely a week later.

So - it could be telling you to get a new battery.

-- Jason

[jkn]

Hi All FYI I see that the smart chargers are currently back on sale at Lidl. As others have said, a good buy at =A312.99 (and it sounds like my charger at least is fine...)

Cheers J^n

[Andrew Gabriel]

If the battery is very flat, it detects it as a 6V battery, and it reaches the fully charged voltage for a 6V battery in a matter of seconds, and switches off.

There's no way around it with just this charger. I coupled up another power supply for a minute to act as a charger to get the battery up to enough that the smart charger detects it as a 12V battery (a low current wall wart will do for a minute, but it may burn out if left too long), and then the smart charger works OK.

Car batteries don't survive flattening this much too often.

[Tinkerer]

I looked in Halfords in November because I decided to change the 11 year old battery on our Pug 406 rather than risk another winter (glad I did). Halfords wanted £90. Fortunately I have a Costco card and got a Bosch for £56.

[Tinkerer]

As I mentioned in my earlier post in this thread. If you have access to a Costco card they do Bosch batteries. I picked up one for our Pug 406 for £56 (Halfords wanted £90).

[Clint Sharp]

In message , jkn writes

Not screwed, the battery is too flat at 9.6v or 6.9v and the charger thinks it's knackered.