430 Battery Problems

My car is my "daily driver" and my battery went bad after 14 months and 16,000 smiles. After holding it for a week because they were "too busy" they replaced it. Three months later and 5,000 smiles later and no problem.

 

Battery Tenders rule... Make sure though it is the Battery Tender Plus. I have motorcycles batteries with five years on them and they are doing great. I also hook up my daily drivers about once a month. Even with daily driving they start out on Red (for charging) and then go to Blinking green (80% of charge) then after an overnight charge go to full green light. Best charger on the market. Go to Yahoo shopping and they run about $40.

For the Stradale I connected the lead to the battery and have it stick above the passenger foot plate. I put a Ferrari sticker on that charger just make it official.

 

I may have to disagree, the deltran's seem to be v e r y touchy about voltage spikes, (a great warranty ..but @ $10. a pop) I own 6 and every one has been sent back more than once.
I have one Sears, for my John Deere, and it ignores the thunder storm spikes @ $25 it's a bargain. I just sent "4" deltran plus units back after a thunderstorm... so....Now...I have just purchased 2 CTEK chargers, which is exactly what came with my F430 (CTEK 800 with ferrari dedicated plug...Aston Martin..BMW. and recommeded by OPTIMA) no problems so far. The CTEK 3300 also has different modes for glass mat, motorcycle, ect. which I use to charge my trap shooting thrower's sealed glass mat deep cycle..
So, for my money technically being more advanced, the CTEK wins, but the actual connector between charger and installed pigtail is better from deltran, I just snipped soldered and shrink tubed it. The Ctek is plastic not aluminum as it appears to be.

 

i bought my new f430 a year ago august. 11 months later, the battery was totally dead. it had worked fine 2 weeks before. i assume this was because of not being driven enough monthly. it could also have been that something (dome light) had been left on. it has been my experience that once a battery goes into deep-discharge for a long time, you can't revive them. even if you do, there capacity is severely diminished. i have gone through lots of Optima batteries this way on my rock-crawling jeep. anyway, i had about 2,200 miles on my f430 when the battery died. my intent is to drive more w/ the new battery. ferrari covered it under warranty. tender is a good idea, but i am too lazy.

edwin

 

racerdj,

I had the exact same thing happen to my F430. And it was properly hooked up to the factory charger.

It went completely dead in a period of about a week....and that's after I had religiously been using the battery charger for about three months over the winter season. I hadn't had any problems up to the point. I currently still use the charger -- haven't had a similar incident since then -- but I inspect the charger almost daily (as I walk past it) to make sure the status lights are still illuminated....

Go figure!?

Norm