charging 458 AGM battery in extremely cold temperatures

What does your local garage guy tell you about other cars batteries in town at that low temp ?

 

Why not hook up a standard say 4 amp charger on a daily charge for say 1/2 hour or what ever it takes to keep it at the right charge level. At least it will warm up the electrolite so you have a better chance of getting it going.
Out of interest where ru that it gets that cold ?

 

If your battery and tender is fine, there shouldn't be any problem with charging even at those low temps. If I were you I'd first let a car electrician check the battery. Most likely, it has gone bad. Maybe your battery tender is not working well as well.

Check the voltage of your battery with a reliable voltmeter. Then leave the car for 3-4 days without the tender. Check the voltage again to see how much it dropped. Put the car on tender for 24hrs and see what happens. If the voltage is above 13V your tender seems to be working fine, meaning the battery is not holding the charge and drops to critical levels very fast at cold temps. So the battery needs to be replaced or maybe reconditioned.

BTW, standard CTEK Ferrari charger is a bit low tech, try to replace yours with the POLAR or this one MXS 10

 

The F oem CTEK trickler is also 4 Amps Mike .... but Murat may be right .... bad battery ?

 

Mine is only 0.8 amps, thats a ferrari oem in an o8 430. Possable the later cars have bigger ones. I give mine a 4 amp charge every now and again during the winter.

 

What year is your 458? Are you sure it has an AGM battery? If it has the HELE system then it does. My 2014 does not have the HELE system and it does not have an AGM battery. I would have to look at the supplied tender as I never used it but I remember the tender that came with my 2007 599 and it only could supply 0.8A. It turned out the car wanted more juice and over several weeks during the winter when I didn't even go to look at the car (near criminal!) the car's battery nearly died along with the supplied tender. Since then, I put a CTek 7002 on a new F car. It has better resistance to power fluctuations and I think a better maintenance mode as well. Btw- a 7002 rescued the battery in my 599 and I kept using that very same battery for a few years after the incident....

 

My 0.8 amp ctek will keep up with the car sitting over the winter, but the low amps are not stopping the plates sulphating up, hence i give it 4 amps now and again .

 

That makes some more sense now. Nice driving!

I doubt this had a bit affect given the relatively short time you had it hooked up, but AGM batteries require a different charging voltage- 14.7v as opposed to your standard car battery which wants 14.4. Did your Ferrari branded CTek 3.3 have an AGM mode that you used (it would look like a snowflake and/or a picture of one type of AGM battery)? One theory is you might have been charging it with the lower voltage- AGM batteries are really sensitive to under voltage charging. No matter which tender you get, make sure it has an AGM mode.

I would imagine most of your drives were longer based on the mileage, but if your most recent drives were fairly short you might not have recharged the battery during your driving and then you add this in plus the cold temps and it might explain it.

Their Polar charger looks like a nice choice for uber cold, but it seems based on the 3.3/4.3 models, I still would recommend the 7002, they say its rated down to -4F and up to over 100F... If you can heat the garage I would highly recommend it- especially to keep the temps above freezing. Even keeping it to 40F would be far better than 30F. Its your power bill, and its not as cold here, but I keep my garage heated to 50-55F.

 

This ^, or get a LTW CF Braille Li-Ion battery like I and Murat have, pricey but worth every penny imho,
my car starts on a dime even after 3+ months of storage in the garage (attached to the tender)

best

 

Do / did we not all receive the same CTEK charger / trickler with our 458 ?

It does give 5 amps, have a look at the pix ! Output 14.4 v / 5.0 amps ...
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How is the weather in your country (where ? ) now Spiders ... and the car battery still O.K. in the heated garage ?

 

Good advice about checking your charger. A friend of mine has a 2013 458 and he had starting problems after the car was sitting for 1 week in the summer. I lent him the charger from my 2011 458 and he had no problem, so his charger was bad. I advised him to buy a 4.3 or 7 amp C-TEK, which he did (don't remember which, but as others have said the 4.3 ought to suffice), spliced the adapter onto it, has not had a problem since.

I think even w/o a charger the car should have been OK for 5 days but the owners manual does advise putting the charger on if it sits for a week or longer.

 

I also had this problem with my 2013. I overwinter in a non-temp controlled garage (oh the horror!)

But then I "upgraded" to the CTEK 7002 with a dongle from Fchat member warren, see more in this thread:
http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/458-italia-488/495098-ctek-battery-reconditioner-adapter-plugin.html

Never had a problem since then, no matter how cold the winter. A healthy battery in these cars does lots of good things for making them run better I find.