Flat battery trickle charger?

[digisatman]

Hey all,

My dads e270cdi has a flat battery, and he's gone to get a ctek trickle charger, and thinks that 3-4 hours on that will get it started.

Will this work? cheers

 

[Gaijin]

A normal trickle charger will normally need a lot longer than that.

Saying that I think I gave the it 5 hours or so on the "fast charge" setting and it *just* got the car started. However, as with most batteries that go flat, it had had it. And would go flat overnight even after a prolonged drive.

 

[Dogbreath]

In a word no, a completely flat battery will need several days on a small trickle charger to fully charge, and probably a day or so to get enough in it to start it. The CTEK chargers are great little chargers for small batteries (e.g. bike) or for keeping a battery fully charged when it's not used, but for the price of the smallest CTEK charger he could have bought a 10 Amp charger from e.g. Argos that would be much more suitable for this situation.

 

[Lashout_UK]

A lot of trickle chargers will not charge a flat battery at all - they need to be able to register a certain amount of volts before they'll commence charging. If the battery is completely dead the charger will think there's nothing connected and not do anything.

 

[digisatman]

i connected it all up, and it seems to be charging, there was enough charge in the car to open doors/boot and flash some error messages so hopefully the charger will be able to revive it!

 

[tigerstyle]

flat battery = a deaded battery

Don't get caught out and stuck miles away from home because of it, go and replace the battery.

 

[Westyfield2]

If he got it properly flat then that battery is a goner, and charging it will just be delaying the inevitable of needing a new one. If it didn't go completely flat (e.g. could still do lights/doors - just couldn't crank) then there's hope for it.

Those CTEK chargers are good though . Which one did he buy? MXS7000 is the one I bought. Charges batteries 14-150 Ah and maintains batteries up to 225 Ah.

 

[BennyC]

I had a battery replaced on my car that turned out to be just over half capacity effective Whenever it didn't start if I was lucky plugging my trickle charger on it for 5-10 minutes would be enough to get it to turn over. Though if it was too far gone I'd need a jump. Got it replaced a few weeks later.

Depends just how flat it is really.

 

[Begbie]

Meh, my battery has been playing up.

Went to halfords, £90! Decided to jump it and hope for the best. Just needs to do a 200~mile trip in a couple of weeks. *touches wood*

 

[Alibaba99]

In a word no, a completely flat battery will need several days on a small trickle charger to fully charge, and probably a day or so to get enough in it to start it. The CTEK chargers are great little chargers for small batteries (e.g. bike) or for keeping a battery fully charged when it's not used, but for the price of the smallest CTEK charger he could have bought a 10 Amp charger from e.g. Argos that would be much more suitable for this situation.

There is a complete range of CTEK units though and the bigger ones are more than capable of recovering dead(ish) batteries and have modes specifically for this. They also have a proper maintenance mode to keep a battery fully charged.

 

[andy_mk3]

Meh, my battery has been playing up.

Went to halfords, £90! Decided to jump it and hope for the best. Just needs to do a 200~mile trip in a couple of weeks. *touches wood*

They charge a lot for batteries. Get one from motor factors they'll be a lot cheaper

 

[NathanE]

Often the battery is totally fine but just needs its water level topping up with distilled water. And then charging using an Accumate.

And "dead" batteries can be brought back to life if left connected to a charger like an Accumate for a couple days. Especially if you disconnect the battery from the car first. Because then the Accumate will detect that nothing else is connected and will pump 25 volts into the battery (low amperage of course) which is a totally fine way of "desulphating" a battery.

 

[The Edge]

further to this i'd invest in a battery/alternator test device. Sometimes a knackered alternator will overcharge a battery and kill it. My grandad had this on his skoda, he didn't find out until he'd got through 3 batteries in 12 months.

 

[MikeHunt79]

Often the battery is totally fine but just needs its water level topping up with distilled water. And then charging using an Accumate.

And "dead" batteries can be brought back to life if left connected to a charger like an Accumate for a couple days. Especially if you disconnect the battery from the car first. Because then the Accumate will detect that nothing else is connected and will pump 25 volts into the battery (low amperage of course) which is a totally fine way of "desulphating" a battery.

I have seen people giving batteries over 30v in order to desulphate a battery before now, only pulses of coarse but it's surprising the way you can go from a battery that won't hold hardly any charge back to a perfectly normal battery...