Battery

[tony_5098273]

Silly question.

I have disconnected my caravan battery to recharge it with a ctek charger. My question is do I have to undo or uncover the battery cells or holes for this to charge bearing in mind when its on charge there is no need to disconnect the ctek it can be left on charge for months at a time.

Any feedback would be appreciated.

 

[RogerL]

There's no need to open the cell plugs when using a smart charger as it'll reduce the voltage to a non-gassing level once the battery is charged - in the same way that it's not necessary to open the cell plugs when using an onboard power supply as that's set to 13.8v to avoid gassing.

 

[rob_jax]

Hi Tony,

Certainly agree with Roger - and there's one further thing I'm trying with my CTEK charger:

Once the battery is fully charged and the CTEK charger flips over into "maintenance mode" and supplies pulses of voltage to keep the battery fully charged, I've changed the charger operation over to "motorbike"

My idea behind doing this is that the "motorbike" mode provides a lower current maintenance charge - so if a cell shorts out and the battery fails - it won't boil the battery trying to recharge what it sees as a flat battery... The battery will still be dead, but there won't be loads of acid vapour everywhere.

Robert