Halfords "Smart" battery charger

Topcat47

Topcat47

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I've had my leisure battery on charge for about five days and according to the lamp on my charger, it's not fully charged. The Battery is registering 12.5 volts. The charger is producing 12.63. It's never going to become fully charged at this rate. Any suggestions? The charger seems to work on my car batteries ok but I suppose even an 80% charge will start a car and the alternator will do the rest. My boat engine hardly runs long enough to fully charge the service battery.
 
Topcat47 said:
I've had my leisure battery on charge for about five days and according to the lamp on my charger, it's not fully charged. The Battery is registering 12.5 volts. The charger is producing 12.63. It's never going to become fully charged at this rate. Any suggestions? The charger seems to work on my car batteries ok but I suppose even an 80% charge will start a car and the alternator will do the rest. My boat engine hardly runs long enough to fully charge the service battery.
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"Halfords smart charger" might be the first mistake but you dont say what model, current one or an older one. How does its max output compare with your battery size?

All these chargers seem to work differently. I Have Ring Smartcharger ( bought from Halfords IIRC) and one of Lidl's cheap ones. They behave quite differently!

It is certainly not charging at 12.5 volts but I dont understand how you get a different figure for the charger. Have you checked the current.

How good/ old is the battery.

Have you tried switching it off, perhaps discharging the battery a little, and starting again.
 
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The instructions with my Halfords "smart" charger say connect the leads to the battery before connecting the charger to the mains. I've done that, and I've connected it to the mains before connecting it to the battery. It works either way for me, but I wonder if it could make a difference.
 
The model was for 1800cc vehicle batteries. The book said it was good for 1.9l diesel engines too, which is what was fitted to the vehicle I had then. It seems to work OK for the one fitted to my current 2.2l Toyota diesel.

I tested the battery without the charger attached after leaving it to stand for an hour or so. I put it back on charge, with the charger connected. Then went back and checked the voltage later (not much later) as it occurred to me that the charger might be putting out too low a voltage. I don't have an ammeter to connect in series to check the charging current.

The battery is just over two years old.
 
I've had a halfords smart charger for about 5 years and it's normally very good. However, when i tried to charge a duff battery it blew the fuse in the back and gave similar results to what you had.
 
Have checked both fuses (I didn't know about the one in the back). Both are fine. Could it be a winding problem with the transformer? If so, how could I tell?
 
Topcat47,

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This is the Halfords charger that I use. The output is 14.5v during charging but reduces slightly as the battery is charged then maintains 13.5v when on float. These figures are consistent whether the battery is leisure or starter and whether good or fails to hold charge.

Perhaps your charger is faulty.

PS I always connect the charger to the battery before switching on the mains. This is to avoid possible sparks as the leads are connected to the battery if the mains is already on.
If the battery has been out-gasing there is a possibility of an explosion if the gases are ignited. I have had a battery explode in front of me - not a pleasant experience.
 
Have you checked the max amperage of the charger? If your charger has a max of 90 amps, it won't fully charge a 110 amp battery. either that suspect the battery is faulty. When charging my leisure battery it would not fully charge using a CETEK smart charger. 90 amp charger to charge a 75 amp battery. I attached my battery tester that has a discharge facility to find that the battery was knackered.
 
The one I have is similar to theoldsalt's one but a different colour and claims to be suitable for batteries fitted to cars up to 1800cc. I've not checked the open circuit voltage as I"m not sure my pocket meter would cope with the charger's output were it not moderated by having the battery in place.

The voltage reading when "floating" is 12.6. I'm not sure how or when this happened or even if it was faulty when I bought it as I"ve never had the occasion to test the output voltage before.

The charger is supposed to be capable of fully charging a 90 amp battery and my leisure battery is 85amp. I took the battery to the company that supplied it and was told it was fine, just not fully charged.

I have a cetek charger for my bike, too, but it's not rated for a car battery.
 
Topcat47 said:
I've had my leisure battery on charge for about five days and according to the lamp on my charger, it's not fully charged. The Battery is registering 12.5 volts. The charger is producing 12.63. It's never going to become fully charged at this rate. Any suggestions? The charger seems to work on my car batteries ok but I suppose even an 80% charge will start a car and the alternator will do the rest. My boat engine hardly runs long enough to fully charge the service battery.
Click to expand...

How long have you had the charger? Halfords had a safety recall on them a few (>5) years ago.
 
I have one of the same chargers still have but on the boat it often didn’t work well , not only failing to charge properly it actually slowly discharged the battery i dont trust it now and bought a ring 12 and 16 smartcharge i like the 12 but the 16 is too big. i dont keep them on the boat only taking them when ness
 
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