'Intelligent' Battery Charger

[Mick D]

Hi

I'm compiling my Christmas wish list and thought an intelligent battery charger would be very useful to have. I need something to maintain 6V / 12V lead acid batteries and 6V /12V AGM batteries, (technically still lead acid I know).

Does anyone here use one that they can recommend? There's a baffling array available.

Regards Mick

[ajscomboman]

Accumate, got 4 of them and they are brilliant. Not cheap but cater for every type of battery 12V and 6V

[Plugsnpoints]

Hi

I'm compiling my Christmas wish list and thought an intelligent battery charger would be very useful to have. I need something to maintain 6V / 12V lead acid batteries and 6V /12V AGM batteries, (technically still lead acid I know).

Does anyone here use one that they can recommend? There's a baffling array available.

Regards Mick

I found this one great for me. My Optimate only worked on 12v batteries. This one you just connect it up and plug it in and it auto detects the voltage. It recovered a 90amp car battery recently and is also happy charging my tiny 6v Ajay one.

[bob]

Several years ago . Lydle / Aldi had them very cheap , I bought several of them and spread them about my mates . for a few quid they are brilliant . Haven't seen them recently tho .

[Plugsnpoints]

Several years ago . Lydle / Aldi had them very cheap , I bought several of them and spread them about my mates . for a few quid they are brilliant . Haven't seen them recently tho .

I think I saw them in Aldi on Saturday just gone so they should be in stock. What I will say is when my dad bought a cheap one it almost cooked the transformer as it was almost too hot to touch.

[JEAN-NOEL]

I use an excellent C TEK, 0.8 A/h but only for 12 V.

[Richard Mills]

I have used a low output Accumate for many years and it works well but was expensive.
A year or so ago I bought a very cheap 'Ultimate Speed' charger from Lidl and it also works well. They had them on sale very recently and so I bought a couple more so that I can charge several batteries at the same time. They give a switchable low output for motorcycles, a higher output for cars and another setting for cars when at very low temperatures.

[petert120r]

Some years ago in Real Classic mag Frank Westworth was singing the praises of the BC Bravo battery charger. I bought one and was seriously impressed. It can bring long dead batteries back to life and also has a desulphate facility to prolong battery existence. Mine however only works on 12 Volt batteries. Expensive but a good bit of kit.

[Dave T_LAPSED]

Might I just give a word of caution for anyone with a "small" 6v battery , the max charge for a lead/acid battery is one tenth of it's total capacity, therefore if you have a 10Ah battery you should only put a 1A charge into it etc. A 2A charger would punish it quite a bit, I , personally prefer a trickle charger at 0.5A which you can find really cheap even switchable 6/12v.



Something like that.
The C-TEK 0.8 A charger is superb but only 12v!

[JEAN-NOEL]

C TEK xs 0.8 has an intelligent charging program :
1 - DESULPHATION
2 - BULK : charging with max current until approx 80 % of full capacity
3 - ABSORPTION : charging with declining current up to 100 %
4 - ANALYSE : test if battery can hold charge & check if voltage drops to 12 V
5 - FLOAT : after 10 days, cycle re starts if voltage drops.
6 - PULSE : cycle restarts if voltage drops Under 12.7 V.
Polarity inversion is automaticaly detected.
When charge is O.K. a green LED is on.
It is delivered with two wires to fit directly on + & -, so I have just to plug the charger without access to the battery !