Ctek charger faulty but light green?

[Sailingsaves]

I have recommended these chargers for years.

My Dad has one on a classic car of his.

The car goes out rarely, hence the special CTek charger permanently attached (as per instructions with all the special leads) to keep the battery in tip top condition.

He went to start the car yesterday and found the battery flat (even though CTek showed green light (float charge).

We tested battery (which was new at time of CTek purchase - maybe 3 years ago) and it shows knackered; internal resistance high, won't accept a charge via our 'normal' (still pretty intelligent) chargers. I will later go round and see if it will accept a charge when placed in parallel with a good battery (that helped me save a mate's Optima once).

BUT anyone any idea why the CTek show all is good when all is actually BAD?

He has one of the 7 or 8 step CTeks and it is rated for his car / battery. He also has a smaller CTek for his classic motor bike.

cheers in advance to those clever than I am.

 

[sarabande]

have you had a series of brownouts or power failures ? I thought that Ctek reset themselves after mains failure, but perhaps a series of multiple mini faults have just got the charger in a twist . A reset ?


What is is that the car battery keeps going (clock, alarm ?) to discharge a batt to flat.

 

[Sailingsaves]

That's two good questions, thanks. (What is a brownout by the way?)

I will ask him tonight, but as far as I know the car uses nothing (except a clock) (oh and a gps tracking device), but they draw very little (I will do a current draw test tonight for him on the new battery).

He thinks the CTek has damaged the battery and it is all the fault of the charger.

I have an oldish battery that I will take round tonight and see what the CTek does to that.

I know he is not pleased at having to buy a new battery after forking out for what I told him was a "fit and forget" battery charging system.

cheers

have you had a series of brownouts or power failures ? I thought that Ctek reset themselves after mains failure, but perhaps a series of multiple mini faults have just got the charger in a twist . A reset ?


What is is that the car battery keeps going (clock, alarm ?) to discharge a batt to flat.

 

[sarabande]

a "brownout" is a reduction in mains voltage below the legal minimum. Very rare but can cause motors and devices to have conniptions.

What is the model of the Ctek ?

Stick the charger on another battery and see if it does the same, or if it keeps the voltage up to spec.

Oh yes, was the charger set to the right type of battery ? There's also a setting to recondition an old battery. A wrong type selection is unlikely to kill a battery, but might under/overcharge it marginally.

 

[Sailingsaves]

Thanks.

He is in the garage every day, so if the CTek did a 're-boot', he'd notice it.

I have taken some of my old batteries round to his before simply to use the de-sulphation pulsing re-vamp feature and it worked a treat.

Hopefully I did not damage his charger.

It is a big battery on his car and correct Ctek charger for battery, so I cannot figure out WHAT could have caused the battery to go down to less that 7 VOLTS !! and knacker the battery, because the 'intelligent' charger is supposed to prevent such a thing.

Sticking on one of my older batteries and seeing how the charger performs (maybe with a watt meter in the line) will hopefully tell me if the charger has failed. Quite a mystery and looking forward to investigating.

 

[sarabande]

you know what you are doing - more than I do !

best of luck.

 

[mlines]

My Ctek has "crashed" in the past. Probably some form of brown out issue at the marina, it went into battery "recovery" mode which is normally selectable from a button on the front and not a mode that automatically cuts in. CTek support told me it could not do this without the button being pressed. Only spotted it as i have a remote battery monitor at home via 4G and saw it suddenly spiking the voltage which is the recovery mode for dud batteries. A clean poweroff/on reset it.

 

[savageseadog]

My Ctek charger stopped working for no apparent reason. The high price doesn't seem to be reflected in the product quality.

 

[Sailingsaves]

As far as I can tell, this product is not as good as the brochures state.

It DOES help recondition a battery, BUT I am not sure that it can be used as a fit and forget charger.

Here are the emails to and from Ctek in case it helps others:

DITT ÄMNE
mxs 5.0

YOUR MESSAGE TO CTEK
I hope this will receive a reply... Summary - see below for discussion - MY QUESTION IS: Why did the cteck charger never give an indication that the battery was failing or had failed? I have used the mxs 5.0 connected to a classic car battery for a long period. The charger remained in position 8 most of the time. I recently went to start my car and the battery was flat. The charger still indicated position 8. A drop test showed the battery was completely depleted of charge although a surface voltage of 12.7 volts was recorded using a fluke multimter. MY QUESTION IS: Why did the cteck charger never give an indication that the battery was failing or had failed? Yours faithfully

HI

Sorry for your trouble.

After reading your mail we suppose that the problem is that your battery is sulphated, and has a high inner resistance and due to that, it cannot receive charge - nor empower your car either. There is possibly also a stratification – acid layering – problem, and these two problems together leads to that the surface voltage stays at 12.7V, and that is within the maintenance margins, and therefore accepted by the charger.
This is a battery specific problem, and will most probably not appear on other batteries that you charge.
We suggest that you restart the charger on “recond” mode and follow the process.




Med vänlig hälsning
Best regards,

Thanks for the reply.

I did as you suggested and the charger went through to LED indicator 8 which suggests all is well.

After performing a drop test on the battery however, the battery is useless.

I suppose this means:

1) the mxs 5.0 model does not provide a means of indicating a battery is useless?

2) This Ctek model will 'work' on a useless battery

3) The Ctek has not prevented a good battery from becoming sulphated and / or acid layering over the years (the Ctek is kept attached to the battery when the car is not in use - the car is used porbably only 3 times a year)?

4) MOST IMPORTANTLY - Having bought a brand new battery, can I leave the Ctek mxs5.0 permanently attached to the battery or will this CAUSE sulphation and / or acid layering?

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Hoping I receive a reply.

I don't want my Dad to knacker a brand new battery from Halfords. (I suggested he take the old battery to Halfords and ask them to see if the battery has been overcharged or undercharged - this is what they did when I took a battery back to them under warranty after a year. They supplied a new battery. They did have a good piece of kit to analyse the battery before they honoured their warranty - good on 'em)

PS - my £15 Aldi charger simply states "No, I won't charge this battery 'cause it is knackered mate" when it is attached to the knackered battery. So it appears it is a smarter charger than the blooming Ctek one which still goes through the whole charging process of the knackered battery.

 

[Yellow Ballad]

I work in a motorcycle shop that sells various smart chargers. We always tell people never fit and forget, the best way we have found is to manually turn the charger on and off every other weekend so the battery can self discharge over the 10 days or so and then have a full charge cycle for a couple of days. The other reason is say the connections break/SWMBO turns it off not realising etc.

Also a lot of smart chargers won't actually charge if the battery is below X voltage as it won't recognise a battery is connected, this is so the leads don't spark when they're connected. Unless you're paying £££ the charger can only really test surface charge so if the battery will hold 12.7~ volts even though when a load is put through this could drop to 0 it'll still show the battery as good.

But the best thing for batteries is to use them.