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[Wittsend]

Advance notice - these smart compact battery chargers are on offer - coming soon.

They are great for trickle charging and maintaining your vehicle's battery, especially if it's not used on a daily basis.
Will maintain and keep the battery in tip-top condition.
Buy now - ready for the winter months - cold weather really finds out just how good/bad your battery is.




 

[Clifford Pope]

I'm really tempted - at that price I'm thinking I might get three, for my three old non-daily vehicles.
I've rather despised trickle chargers, but I'm realising that batteries have changed, and do go flatter if not used.

In the old days with old-style batteries it was always said to be very bad for a battery to keep charging it up - batteries needed to be used vigorously, and charged and discharged regularly, but would stay charged for months if not used. But I realise that now that is no longer true.
The battery on the LR came with the vehicle, and is a large one of unknown age. It must be the last of the old-style ones - it never gets charged between start-ups, and seems to have bags of cranking power even if left a month or two. But the new one I recently got for the tractor is noticeably slower-turning even after a week.

I've also noticed that as well as loosing cranking power batteries need to be fully charged to have the voltage to produce a decent spark. An old battery would often kick an engine into life even if struggling to turn it over, and would often fire just as one released the button as the voltage momentarily bounced back up.

[Herald1360]

What's bad for lead acid batteries is continuous charging at more than about 13.8V (at 20C, it's temperature dependent too) or leaving them discharged for any length of time. At this level, 13.8V, the "float" voltage, only any self discharge is replaced and the battery can be left on charge for extended periods.

A higher voltage ~14.4V (again temperature dependent) is useful to quickly recharge a battery but the charge should be terminated (or dropped to the float level) when the current taken by the battery drops off markedly (in wet batteries, they start gassing freely around this point).

A good, "intelligent" charger takes care of this automatically and can be hooked up, turned on and left to get on with it.

[Clifford Pope]

I've bought three of these chargers.
The immediate thing I notice is that even a brand new battery in a vehicle used almost daily, with alternator charging, never maintains full charge through vehicle charging alone. It has taken two days of continuous charging to get the charger to register fully charged, and presumably it has now switched to trickle charging.

Similarly the Land-Rover was showing only 3 bars of charge when I first switched on the charger. Yet I would never have guessed it was anything like as low as that. It had held its charge for weeks, and was still capable of turning the engine over to get the oil light to go out with no diminution of cranking vigour.  It has taken 3 days of continuous charging with the Aldi charger to reach full indicated charge, and the voltage finally to drop to 13.8V.

[Daisythelandy]

Bought one of these Aldi chargers today, they were also recommended on a VW site for charging a Stop/Start battery which to replace was £200 and people have used this charger to bring these batteries back to good health. Put my old Landy battery on which was being trickled with a solar charger for a good while and the Aldi charger quickly moved from three to the full 'five bars' on the battery. I don't like leaving these things on all the time so that will do it. Will try it on the Stop/Start battery in my Ateca tommorrow.

Dave.

[Dormy]

I bought a similar model from Aldi (or was it Lidl - I always get the two muddled up !). It works very well and does exactly what it is meant to.

One thing to be aware of is the need to press the 'mode' button to start charging. If you live in a rural area like we do and suffer quite frequent power cuts (only a few seconds but happens 2 - 3 times in a month) it will trip the unit into standby and no further charging will take place. An occasional check of the charger status might be a good idea, especially if the clock on your cooker has had to be reset !

[winchman]

One thing worth noting, if you have a totally flat battery it might not charge it, I had one but started it off on my traditional charger then switched to the smart charger no problem, but for garret maintenance they are excellent