Battery tender question

do all the lights turn on within a short period of time like five minutes?

 

yes, pretty normal once you unplug for the battery to recycle and then take a bit to to get back up to full. Often when I’m walking past the battery I just disconnect and reconnect. Don’t worry about those warning lights if once the battery is fully charged and you have reset everything they go away. Very normal and if it’s original battery, it may be getting a little weak. Just have them swap it out the next service.

 

Yes- All those alerts will fire when battery is drained- I've had it happen a few times in my 458 Spider-

 

The tender will always go back through the light sequence when recharging. That's what the lines next to the lights are describing with the different phases of the charging cycle. But you likely also need a new battery.

 

To expand on the above answers, it definitely starts at the beginning each time. Most CTEK battery tenders goes through:

STEP 1 DESULPHATION
Detects sulphated batteries. Pulsing current and voltage, removes sulphate from the lead plates of the battery restoring the battery capacity.
STEP 2 SOFT START
Tests if the battery can accept charge. This step prevents that charging proceeds with a defect battery.
STEP 3 BULK
Charging with maximum current until approximately 80% battery capacity.
STEP 4 ABSORPTION
Charging with declining current to maximize up to 100% battery capacity.
STEP 5 ANALYSE
Tests if the battery can hold charge. Batteries that can not hold charge may need to be replaced.
STEP 6 RECOND
Choose the Recond program to add the Recond step to the charging process. During the Recond step voltage increases to create controlled gassing in the battery. Gasing mixes the battery acid and gives back energy to the battery.
STEP 7 FLOAT
Maintaining the battery voltage at maximum level by providing a constant voltage charge.
STEP 8 PULSE
Maintaining the battery at 95–100% capacity. The charger monitors the battery voltage and gives a pulse when necessary to keep the battery fully charged

 

The absorption phase takes the longest. Most modern daily driven cars are not at 100% battery capacity because of all the microprocessors that are "on" when the car is turned off.

 

Starting your car puts a big demand on the battery. It should recharge as you drive around. A 10 minute drive is probably not enough to recharge it. I don’t know the exact amount of time needed for a 458, but I would imagine its 30-40 minutes of driving. Thus, starting the car, drive for 10 minutes, stop, start the car, drive for 10 minutes means you are slowly depleating the battery. Which is why the tender wants to top up the battery. The kinds of errors you are showing are possible when the battery is just old. These cars are super sensitive to the battery wearing out, even just a little bit.


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So on this general topic- Something interesting just happened- thoughts/theories appreciated.

As I have posted I store my 458 offsite at a storage facility with no power- my solution has been to not lock the car and thus the alarm is off and use portable power+battery tender to charge the battery when needed. Up until September the car could sit for 2+ weeks and start fine- after returning from a week trip I attempted to start it and got the "service due in xx days" alert on left TFT and the car was dead- odd but I charged it and all was fine. Since then and up until last week it took forever for the battery to fully charge- took her in for annual last week then put away- Saturday hooked up the charger thinking it would take several hours and within 15 minutes was fully charged.

My theory- The reason it drained so quickly in Sept was the emergence of the alert/code for upcoming service and that code was present until last week causing drain on the battery- when they did the annual they cleared/reset the code and now back to normal.

Thoughts?

Cheers

 

How old is the battery? It could also be bad battery cells/ cells going bad. The tender was trying to fill up the battery but as they went bad the tender didn't really see it- it only sees the good cells- thus a fast top off. I've had this happen several times. Also I believe locking the car puts the systems into a deeper sleep state and will draw less power. These cars can be very finicky.

BUT THEY ARE WORTH IT!

 

Yes they are Battery was replaced with OEM in May of 2020 so relatively new. And as mentioned it is back to behaving as normal now - I seriously think the "maintenance due" code was draining the battery - that is the only variable between normal functionality/charging time leading up to the maintenance countdown window and now after the maintenance was completed. I will ask the tech next time I see him - Just interesting is all - Cheers