Is my battery conditioner charging? (New-Guy question..

Should be at least 12.5 to 12.8 at battery terminals....don't trust the gauge..if it is that low you need to fully charge battery and retest or if old...get a new one

I can't answer your first question

 

Solid orange indicates the car is charging.

Cars with 2 pin magnetic connectors will not display the charger connected indicator. That is a feature of the older 4 pin connector.

 

The problem with the Ferrari battery tenders is they are the bottom of the CTEK line. Hey, it's only a $400K+ car, why would Ferrari supply a top of the line tender/maintainer.

I'd advise you to buy a better one, e.g. CTEK 7002.

 

The newest ones aren't CTEKs. They're generic Chinese chargers contract manufactured for Fix-a-Flat and branded for Ferrari.

The Ferrari branded CTEKs with 3 lights used with 4 pin connectors are inadequate, but they switched to the full fledged 8 step version (although still only the 0.8a model) when they started using the magnetic connector.

The 7002 is frankly a waste of $70 in the vast majority of use cases compared to the MXS 5.0.

 

The 7002 was/ is still/ a great choice as it will resist brown outs better than the 5.0. The 5.0 is a newer model, and I think it would work also work well for our needs, but I am convinced the 7002 is more robust. I could be wrong. It’s hard to argue with saving money, theres no need to spend extra if the result is the same.

But none is immune to surges and brown outs. Since these tenders dont draw a ton of power, noting that my then new Pista came with the medium level Ctek for LiOn batteries, I added another step to my battery tender setup. I added a small computer battery uninterruptible power supply. The power you get from these comes off the battery, so it’s always smooth. I tested this with two tenders plugged into it and disconnected from the wall and it lasted about 8 hours. Which is more than I need. The main objective is to save the tenders, and thus the car itself, from brown outs, spikes, surges, etc. Ive been very happy with the results. It occurred to me I should use this on all my tenders. I’ve had no tenders fail using this setup since I got my Pista in 2019.

This is the model I went with, Im sure there are others…

APC UPS Battery Backup and Surge Protector, 600VA/300 Watts Backup Battery Power Supply, BE600M1 Back-UPS with USB Charger Port

https://a.co/d/6gPjwGs

 

7002 has a max output current of 7.0a whereas the MXS5.0 has a max output of 4.3a. The 7002 also have a constant 7a "SUPPLY" mode, which isn't enough to power much on a modern car anyways. Otherwise they're functionally the same.

CTEK has only ever made one model of lithium charger...

 

Brownouts and surges etc can fry the tender. Depends on how often you are going to look at the car and tender, if it's every day, then it really shouldn't matter. But sometimes I am away from them for short periods, one winter I was away from my 599 for 2 months due to weather, and during that period the car actually killed the then supplied factory tender. This wasn't a surge, just the fact that the car wanted more amps than the then tender could supply. Came out to find the car without much power. But the result of a dead tender would be the same.

Yes regarding the CTEK LiON. But it's the middle level tender, tailored for LiON chemistry. It's more susceptible to brownouts and surges than the more robust 7002.
It doesn't have to do with functions/ features/ bells and whistles/ but the ability to absorb issues with power.

When the Pista was first released, while absurd, Ferrari was quoting a tremendous amount of money for a replacement battery, and some were reported as having problems. Since 2008 I have noticed auto batteries are not made as well, many coming new with bad cells. Sometimes hard to detect.

Just trying to share some experience with you all, feel free to use or ignore.

 

So less is better?

 

If you have frequent power issues you need an in panel line conditioner. A line conditioning UPS for your battery tender is a band-aid.

That's not possible due to Ohm's law and the tenders current limiting circuitry. The battery acts as a buffer and can discharge if the electrical system is drawing more power than the tender can provide, but it can't draw more current from the tender.

That's not true. Having disassembled and repaired multiple chargers, I can say with certainty that all of the 8-step models are about 90% identical. The main difference is that the 7002 has additional components on the low-voltage side to provide up to 7A instead of 4.3A—it’s not inherently more robust against brownouts or surges.

The quality of everything is lower than it was 20yrs ago.

That's not what I said. What I said is the extra 2.7a doesn't matter for a battery tender. If you need to supply power for diagnostics/programming or charge a truly dead battery, you need a much bigger charger (25+ amps).

**Not trying to be argumentative, but I want to set the record straight for anyone who might not be intimately familiar with this topic.

 

Fair enough but none of that changes my experience where by I discovered the 599 needed more juice than the then supplied tender could provide, maybe I just described the situation incorrectly?

Whilst not clearly as knowledgeable as you, Ive had issues with the lower down the food chain models, hence, if Im going to recommend something, I do it based on my own personal experience, and I’ve never had a 7002 die in 17 years of using them- except the time I accidentally drove over one- and it seemed ok but I didnt want to risk it.

My power is actually generally very good to excellent and I’ve installed whole home surge protection- but never the less, the power company will every now and then flick the power on and off- seemingly for fun! Im sure theres a legitimate reason, but since I can’t predict this, and also, when giving advice, I can’t know someone else’s situation, I assume they have not as good a power setup.