When we bought our van the seller was using a 110Ah car battery. I also have an 80Ah leisure battery from a previous van. Anyway both batteries appear to be dud and won't hold their charge / charge up fully.
We always go the EHU sites but I have a twin axle with a motor mover which is my main use for the battery.
I was about to shell out circa £100 on a new leisure battery however on doing some research realised that I should really buy a smart charger to go with a new battery (I presume my 2004 van isn't fitted with a smart charger) in order to prolong it's life.
Having read some reviews of the CTEK CTE-MXS5.0 on Amazon there are a lot of people saying it has brought dud batteris back to life! So I decided to buy the charger first and attempt to revive my existing batteries. Hopefully I will not have to buy a new one but time will tell!
Anyway here is my query?
I keep my van outside me house year round and so can have power to it all year round. Should I try and fit my new smart charger into my van so that I can charge / maintain the battery in situ? This would be my preferred option as I don't have a garage.
Would it be as easy as feeding the red and black cables from the charger into my battery box, wiring them into the existing clamps and then plugging the charger in?
I suppose I would just have to make sure that the caravan's 12v charger on the power unit was turned off?
Preferably i'd like to stick an additional 240 volt socket under the seat so that I can have the smart charger plugged in all the time and hidden away.
Could I do this all year round or would it get too cold for the battery in the winter?
I will keep you posted re my attempts to bring my old batteries back to life with my new toy...fingers crossed!
I use a CTek Zafir 90 charger, bought from Costco back in 2009 for £36 inc vat.
And it has kept my 10 year old leisure battery alive, when I thought it was dead before I got the CTek.
The CTek came with a quick connector, as well as croc clips, and when not camping I leave the CTek permanentley connected to the battery, being a camper my battery is in one of those plastic battery box which has a cigaret connector so I just plug the CTek into that socket for charging.
In your case I would be tempted to introduce a switch, so that when you are charging, all the other equipment in the van is isolated from the charger, so only the battery is in the charging circuit.
Not being a caravaner I will be interested to see other replies.
I got the one lidl was selling after my charger went duff.I just spiced in the wires to the chargers outputs and it works a treat.Not really a bother but,everytime i put on the ehu ive got to set it.
You don't need to worry about the battery getting too cold. A lead-acid battery self-discharges faster in the cold, but a CTEK will sense that, and just drop out of maintenance mode to top it up more often when that happens.
The C-Tek will be delivered with a pair of adaptors to provide either croc clips or bolt-on eyelets which you can leave permanently fixed to the existing battery terminal fittings.
As mentioned, you'd not want both chargers running simultaneously, so consider some means of isolating one from the other. If your existing charger is easily accessible, switch it off or otherwise disconnect it and leave other 12v switches off.
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Topic: CTEK smart charger
