So, after fitting the new Yuasa battery have started the landy in -5 temp for the last two days and no problems. Engine flys over and starts within seconds proving my old battery just wasn’t, up to the challenge of cold starts.
The old girl doesn’t, do many long journeys now and I am considering getting a Ctek smart charger to keep the new battery fully charged. Does anyone have experience of using these?
Yes, I have experience of using several of the baby CTEK chargers and I have the high current one which can also act as a power supply for cars that need external power when you may need to work on them and leave doors and lights and things on, i.e. a friends AUDI needs to be plugged in when working on it for a long time with the VAGCOM diagnostics as the ECU and all systems are on with the ignition.
You can be clever and get a CTEK charger branded as someone else, same changer, usually not as expensive! Costco were doing them for a while for about £30.
The one I have, branded as RING, but identical to a CTEK model, is a very good charger, I tried to get another one but they only seemed to have them branded as RING for a short period, I reckon the CTEK one is over £100 now for this model.
Battery technology is a small, but important part of my business, I used to do a lot of solar/energy etc. storage research and the charging was the critical thing, I did a lot of research into optimal charge voltages and currents and timings for all the different chemistry types. Before I had my smart charger I used a 20V/20A, super accurate hundredth of a Volt/Current controllable lab power supply to charge batteries, I could control the charge current down to the 10th of a mA and would create the optimal charge sequence, the final charge was usually about 30mA when it dropped off I knew it was pretty much brimmed.
I had an old Numax battery that died one winter, well about 5 years later I was still using it through winter with only the odd top up when I knew it would be suffering a bit. It's a it of a game for me!
