Can someone recommend a decent car battery charger?
Mine has gone to the great junkyard in the sky.
Can someone recommend a decent car battery charger?
Mine has gone to the great junkyard in the sky.
Just put your mouth over the negative terminal and blow some electrons in.
To some extent it depends if you want to trickle-charge the battery on a little-used vehicle, or charge at a high a rate as possible after the lights have been left on.
Usual advice here is to look out for special offers from Aldi or Lidl; no personal experience in that respect however.
Chris
The latter. I have battery conditioners for the rarely driven vehicles.
Sadly, this is not really an option.
CTEK ones are usually well thought of.
They appear to have the same spec as the Lidl ones at 1/3rd of the price...
Ta.
My experience is that it's difficult to find a charger delivering more than 15A for a reasonable price. Even 15A chargers will be up around £80+. I have a 15/25A charger that works reasonably well, I can't recall what it cost other than the fact it made me wince. Set to 25A and it will charge a flat battery fairly quickly but it will overheat and cut out after about an hour of use. At 15A it will fully charge a flat 110AH battery overnight, dropping off to 2-3A when the charge is complete.
It was bought in Italy, but is roughly similar to a SIP Startmaster. The SIP is rated at 35A and costs about £210. Toolstation sell them. If that's too expensive SIP do a cheaper model, the Chargemaster. Also available via Toolstation. Toolstation's prices seem pretty good compared to eBay.
If you don't want to pay that much, I also have one of these:
I have a couple of fairly shonky chargers in the shed, you could have one for the princely sum of £0. I don't think either of them manages more than 5A though.
If you wish to use a vehicle where the lights or whatever have been left on and it won't start, you'd be better off having a slave battery to start it - quicker than waiting for any charger, except for very expensive 'starting' types. For most else, one which charges the battery between the end of the working day and the start of the next is good enough in practice - and one which chucks out a *genuine* 5 amps or so will charge it enough to start the car ok.
I use my charger(s) mostly for the tractor, believe me a 5A charger doesn't do much for the batteries fitted to tractors. Last time that I tried to jump-start the tractor I needed two sets of serious jump leads (that I have) a secondary 110AH battery and the Ford with the engine running.
know, but the OP said Lidl/Aldi out of the question.
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