Thoughts on mains car battery boosters?

[Robotstar5]

We had one of the big wheel around charger/starters at work, but half the times we needed it the transport supervisor had "borrowed" it and had to fetch it from home so I replaced the normal 13A plug with an industrial blue 16A plug, it stayed at work then

 

[arther dailey]

I've had that exact model for a few years now.
Works very well as a charger and a jump pack but as it's a smart charger, if the battery is below a certain voltage then it won't work at all.
Last time I had to charge a totally flat battery I had to connect another battery in parallel to get the charger to recognise it, then disconnect the spare battery once it started charging.

I like the method ,thanks, will try that

 

[JOEPRO]

I've had that exact model for a few years now.
Works very well as a charger and a jump pack but as it's a smart charger, if the battery is below a certain voltage then it won't work at all.
Last time I had to charge a totally flat battery I had to connect another battery in parallel to get the charger to recognise it, then disconnect the spare battery once it started charging.

Yes that's a well known method to get a smart charger to start.

For me if I have to lug a spare battery pit to a car I will step it out instead and take the dead one on to charge on a bench.

Hench why I'm interested in a all in one mains powered solution to charge and boost start a car if it has ran flat. (Always a last resort best case is to prevent them from getting flat in the first place of course)

 

[chrismac]

Out of interest, how many flat battery cycles do you manage before the batteries are not suitable or usable anymore....
I ask this as I have for years now tried in vain to maintain batteries for my fire fighting pumps, I always ended up with failed batteries, they are the small 12v type, the last set I bought were sealed AGM and they seem to be lasting better with a charge up now and again.
I used to try the solar chargers, but between me not keeping an eye on the fluid level and left connected they would run low and knacker the battery, its hard to keep on top of these things always, life gets in the way I find and you forget about things.

 

[dobbslc]

The Optimate chargers will keep them alive almost indefinitely.
I've only had three batteries on my bike in 22 years.

 

[voipio]

There's this.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Draper-11966-Battery-Charger-Starter/dp/B007H6XK7U

 

[Robotstar5]

The Optimate chargers will keep them alive almost indefinitely.
I've only had three batteries on my bike in 22 years.

I had an Optimate charger fail after about 15 years, just replaced it with another, I've fitted charging sockets to all my bikes since the 90's, one sat unused for a couple of years and the Optimate kept the battery ready to go.

 

[RonMig]

If any of ours are not being used for more than a few weeks, I stick a £14ish Lidl smart-charger on with a 24-hour timer set to 1 hour per day - it does a quick voltage check up to 15v, then soon settles down to around 800milliamps (or less) for the hour, which seems to be all they need.

I measured it once & found it was around 125 milliamps, which would probably be safe for much longer periods, but I prefer the timer approach.

Not had to use this beast yet - is probably more suited to farm/groundworks tractors than my domestic needs.
Still scares me a bit...

 

[arther dailey]

Yes that's a well known method to get a smart charger to start.

For me if I have to lug a spare battery pit to a car I will step it out instead and take the dead one on to charge on a bench.

Hench why I'm interested in a all in one mains powered solution to charge and boost start a car if it has ran flat. (Always a last resort best case is to prevent them from getting flat in the first place of course)

I have the same problem with my tractors , excepting if I leave them on there the pixies who like a five finger discount tend to take them, so looking to leave duff ones on and jump , need to buy one of those jump packs really, brother got one , went to use it 3 months later flat as a pancake..waste of monies

 

[JOEPRO]

I have the same problem with my tractors , excepting if I leave them on there the pixies who like a five finger discount tend to take them, so looking to leave duff ones on and jump , need to buy one of those jump packs really, brother got one , went to use it 3 months later flat as a pancake..waste of monies

I have this China one this 6 or 7 years. Still works great and starts V8s etc I have. No decay in performance at all.



The limitation with these is that they give a jump boost for about 10 seconds at a time only. Still works but not much help for assisting a dead battery on a smart charger etc.

 

[jmp49]

I have this China one this 6 or 7 years. Still works great and starts V8s etc I have. No decay in performance at all.

View attachment 475915

The limitation with these is that they give a jump boost for about 10 seconds at a time only. Still works but not much help for assisting a dead battery on a smart charger etc.

I had a spate of using one of them, but I always melted the special leads overdoing the duration/amperage (yeah, maybe a cold flat 3.7 diesel jcb was a bit optomistic...) They make great torches and phone banks after this though.

 

[JOEPRO]

So unfortunately this is a bust

5 mins fast charge then start cycle. Engine wouldn't turn over at all and thermal fuse popped out immediately.

NFG.

Shame really. As a dumb charger / power supply during diagnostics it may still be useful while I mull over if it's worth sending back.

In terms of mains powered booster seems like I definitely need a bigger boat.

Edit- Trying it on my dead V12 battery it seems to be charging at much higher amps. Could be the 300E-24 battery is completely dead.

I won't try to start the V12 with it as it's electrics would be too sensitive.

 

[voipio]

The battery is probably completely fubar'd. These chargers are not capable of supplying the 500, or so, cold cranking Amps required, if the battery is absolutely dead. I bet if you fast charge the battery for 5 mins, take the charger off, and switch on the headlights, they'll go dim pretty much straight away.

 

[m_c]

In my experience, booster chargers are rarely any use.
For what you're aiming for, a decent jump pack, or a good battery and pair of jump leads would be far more useful, unless you want to spend several hundred on a mains booster, but even then it would be limited, as unless the battery has some charge in it, the boosters are rarely powerful enough to crank an engine.

 

[JOEPRO]

The battery is probably completely fubar'd. These chargers are not capable of supplying the 500, or so, cold cranking Amps required, if the battery is absolutely dead. I bet if you fast charge the battery for 5 mins, take the charger off, and switch on the headlights, they'll go dim pretty much straight away.

That's what I'm thinking, the battery may be kaput here.

I tried this new lidl proclaimed 500amp jump pack on it, no good either.



Clamp meter says 270amp.max current was output



I'm pretty sure my other older jump pack would start this car but it's lent out so I'll get it back this weekend and try it for sharts and giggles and out a clamp on it.

 

[Jelly_Sheffield]

Dont think I have ever lost a map by removing the battery from a vehicle. The D2 sat for 9 months without one but its still running the same map as when the battery was taken out.

It won't (shouldn't) loose the "core" mapping from the ECU, where the AFR and VE tables are written to the ECM memory.

But I know on Toyota diesels there's a secondary table in the ECM which "self learns" the engine performance and fine tunes the "core" mapping, that's lost on disconnecting the battery for more than 10 minutes, or certain other changes in Techstream (their software tool).

The service manual advises that a very specific sequence of controlled engine revs taking about 10 minutes is needed to allow it to rebuild itself, otherwise performance will be reduced for "upto 100km" of driving whilst it's learning.

 

[chrismac]

So unfortunately this is a bust

View attachment 476080

5 mins fast charge then start cycle. Engine wouldn't turn over at all and thermal fuse popped out immediately.

NFG.

Shame really. As a dumb charger / power supply during diagnostics it may still be useful while I mull over if it's worth sending back.

In terms of mains powered booster seems like I definitely need a bigger boat.

Edit- Trying it on my dead V12 battery it seems to be charging at much higher amps. Could be the 300E-24 battery is completely dead.

I won't try to start the V12 with it as it's electrics would be too sensitive.

Surprised you dont have a battery condition tester, it gives an indication of SOH & SOC, how accurate I dont know but I have found it saves flogging a dead horse.

Like in the link below,

Pardon our interruption...

 

[JOEPRO]

Surprised you dont have a battery condition tester, I have found it saves flogging a dead horse.

Pardon our interruption...

I have several battery testers. Very high quality ones.

But they won't test a flat battery, it has to be recharged first!

 

[dobbslc]

It won't (shouldn't) loose the "core" mapping from the ECU, where the AFR and VE tables are written to the ECM memory.

But I know on Toyota diesels there's a secondary table in the ECM which "self learns" the engine performance and fine tunes the "core" mapping, that's lost on disconnecting the battery for more than 10 minutes, or certain other changes in Techstream (their software tool).

The service manual advises that a very specific sequence of controlled engine revs taking about 10 minutes is needed to allow it to rebuild itself, otherwise performance will be reduced for "upto 100km" of driving whilst it's learning.

Do you think a 1996 Surf with the 1KZ-TE engine would be like this?

 

[chrismac]

I have several battery testers. Very high quality one.

But they won't test a flat battery, it has to be recharged first!

Out of interest are your batteries then showing a good state of heath once started and charged?, or can you not justify having healthy batteries on all your cars and just need to get them fired up as and when using knackered batteries.