Smart charger

[Beehpee]

Hi all, I am just putting on my Xmas list a smart charger to bring up to full charge my caravan battery as its gone down too low to charge on the caravan, also want it to have the maintenance option to I think it's call equalize it, one I've seen is the ctek mxs7, I know people have in the past mentioned one that aldi sometimes sell but can't really wait just on the off chance they will get them in so any reccomendations for alternatives that are as good as the ctek mxs7 but not so expensive would be greatly appreciated, daughter is breathing down my neck wanting to know what to buy me so sooner rather than later with any alternatives would be much appreciated as well, thanks in advance.

BP

 

[RogerL]

The CTEK MXS range has several outputs and price points - the MXS3.6, MXS5.0, MX7.0, MXS10 and MXS25.
I use an earlier version of the MXS3.6 - it'll look after car and leisure batteries up to 130Ah but over 85Ah they do take longer to charge.
The CTEK MXS3.6 is £50-£55.

 

[Sproket]

I have one of these sat in the van & coupled to the 12 year old gel battery at the moment.
It will stay there till we next use the van

Automatic charger

 

[Beehpee]

Just had another look at ctek range and I reckon the mxs5 would probably be just a bit better and seems to be readily available at a much better price than the 7 and hardly any dearer than the 3.6 you mentioned, so unless someone comes back with anything else or any reason why the 5 wouldn't be any good I will probably go for that one, thanks for the reply.

BP

 

[Beehpee]

I like the look of the ctek5 cos states it will recover low discharged batteries

 

[TD42]

Many smart chargers will not start to charge a battery that is down to low voltages Ie the Aldi/LiDl charger will not start to charge a battery below 7V.in these cases try jump leads from the car battery to the leisure battery.this usually causes the batteries to equalize,& puts enough into the low battery to get the smart charger to see it

 

[SirRogerFFS]

Hi Beehpee.As was said in the post above the Aldi charger wont help too much if your battery has dropped to below 7 Volts but I have to say my very first Caravan battery did me 7 years.What I used to do was let battery run down and and then charge it with my 11 amp charger It doesnt do a Leisure battery any harm it actually livens them up a bit.I did buy the charger from Aldi and find it very very good what I now do is wait for the tracker to notify be battery is low then off to the farm change it before it gets too low and let the Aldi charger take over .I hope this helps.