Battery conditioner

I decided last night to hook up the battery conditioner to my Scud for the first time. I have been so busy lately that I have been only driving my car a couple of times a month. I am worried that the battery will drain eventually, so last night I figured how to connect this thing to my car.
I have one question....last night the light showed the battery needed a charge. Image Unavailable, Please Login
This morning it showed that the battery was not completely charged ( as per pic). The light still showed that it was half way charged. Is this normal, or am I reading too much in to this?

 

The light on the right turns solid when it's done.

 

Is this any indication of the weakness of the battery? It charged overnight but still no full light.

 

Took mine 48 hours to fully charge.

 

Same here.

 

Thanks guys! Sounds like it's normal to take a couple of days to fully charge.

 

Give it a couple of days.
All should be fine.

 

You got a junky battery, that's why.

 

What year is your Scud?

Below is a thread I started few weeks ago. It's about the same battery maintainer and amount of time to top it off

http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=389187

 

Mine is an 09 Scuderia

 

See if the maintainer will be able to top it off in couple of days, or even a week
If it switches to green your good.

From what I understand these factory maintainers are very low amperage, not exactly up to task, when our batteries are healthy 100% they are able to top it off, however as time goes by, winter time cold conditions it will take longer to switch to green.

 

Oneofew,

Sounds good! It's been less than 24 hrs, so when I get home I'll check.

 

Yes, it is normal and you are reading too much into it. You should know also that the indicator can turn green even with a bad battery. A lead acid battery has a finite life. In hot climates (like Florida), that life (in my experience) is four years. In colder climates (like New York), it's five or six years. The tender helps a little, especially if you don't drive your car much. But your battery will still go bad eventually, even though your tender shows a green light.

When your ear tells you the starter motor is turning more slowly, get a new battery.

 

Problem with all battery maintainer/ conditioner is that once the battery is too low... it can't recover. I use the battery tender from Deltran before and lost already four, plus it doesn't do the job, plain and simple.
The C=tek is way better... I have for my Porsche and works flawless.
Now if the battery is dead... I don't think it will kick back. I found the Save A Battery and order one from www.glisteningperfection.com ... problem is... already over two weeks and no sign of item... or track number... I try to contact them several times. Phone, emails... No answer. Do you guys know them ?
Here is the pick and link: http://www.glisteningperfectionstore.com/servlet/Detail?no=226
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It takes about 48hrs for mine to go green then it alternates green for 1 minute back to orange for 15 sec then to green. I had a new red top battery placed two months ago.

 

I think the way the C-tek/Ferrari OEM works is on cycle. It fully charge and wait to drop again to start charging back.

 

The newer cteks are much better than the older OEM. More amps and more sophisticated.

I have a SaveABattery charger. The reason I got it is that my Ctek wasn't able to fully bring my battery back. The ctek has a 1.5 amp charge (the OEM one is lower, like .8 amps) when trying to charge a low battery, while the saveabattery has a 4 amp charge. If your battery is in good condition, it probably doesn't matter, both are good units.

@ Zxgarage, you should have ordered from Amazon! Glisteningperfection has had order problems in the past.

 

I cancel my order from glisteningperfection.com and order from Jegs. (free and fast shipping)
Glistening doesn't have a bad customer service... there is no customer service at all.

 

The charger for the 430s is really a low current unit -- only about 1/2 amp maximum as I recall. It is normal for it to take a day or even more to charge to capacity. The light will turn green when it is done.

There are pros and cons to having a low current charger. An obvious con is that it takes longer. But there is very little risk of frying the battery at such low currents.

 

Let's not forget charging a Deep Cycle battery is little different... If and when charging one, we must use the right tool.

 

Just for the record, it took the OEM tender 8 days before the light finally went green.

 

The CTEK 4.3 is more powerful, might have been faster, also the 4.3 has more indicators and more complex "conditioning" modes so you can see what stage the charge cycling is at.

I use the OEM (which is a CTEK 3000 or so, and a CTEK 4.3. Too bad they both don't share the same connector. So i have two pigtails on my 430. The 4.3 has a vastly superior low insertion force connector. Almost worth the change in itself. The 4.3 is ~$70 usd