Built in battery charger to use or not to sue

Is it a charger or a maintainer? Through this chat room, I discovered they are different. I have a CTEK 4.3 maintainer that I have on whenever the car is in my garage. If you do a search on CTEK you should get more details.

 

Unless there is some other issue (e.g. weak battery, parasitic drain, faulty charger), it should not be in charge mode continuously for two days.

For starters, how old is the battery?

You might want to pick up an external "smart" charger from a reputable mfr. (CTEK or Deltran) and hook it up to see what happens. My experience has been that with a healthy battery and no parasitic drain, it should go into the "maintenance" mode within five or six hours maximum. If the battery is deeply discharged, it might take up to twelve hours.

One more thing. Where is the "shut-off" for the battery? If, by shutting off the battery, you are creating an open circuit from the charger, that will of course prevent it from working.

 

I don't think you should sue.

 

Can you give us the exact manufacture and model of the charging device in question?


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Okay, just make sure that's not also cutting off the current from the charger. (If indeed the battery has been shut off.) You would likely not get a charging indication from the charger if this were the case. Just trying to cover all the bases.

 

Many of the smaller tenders or maintainers are not designed to charge a discharged battery, merely to top them off. They do not charge quickly since they were not designed for that purpose.

I have seen mine go 24hrs or more once on a battery with an unknown charge, after it had been driven 1hr+ home prior to plugging it in.

 

A review of literature on the web indicates that this model is indeed a charger/maintainer. Meaning that it will "tend" to the battery after bringing it to full charge. This is not the same thing as a trickle charger which would fry your battery with time. The PO did his homework putting this unit in your car. If it appears that it is charging more then tending then perhaps something else is amiss. Could be a parasitic drain or a defect in the battery. You can easily get the battery checked at most auto parts stores. As long as this is connected to the battery the switch or disconnect should not make a difference. If wired in somewhere else then it would matter and that switch or disconnect would need to be on. Good luck.


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Ive left my cars on the C-TEC for 2 Canadian winters and they do just fine. There is always a little drain on the battery somewhere and if not left on a maintainer for 4 months you will get a totally7 discharged battery which will freeze and become junk.

 

I've had good luck using a maintainer plugged in all the time on our seldom-driven Maserati. My brother used to leave a regular battery charger (not a maintainer) on the lowest setting on his Miata during winter at a sumer home and he went through batteries quickly (he now uses a maintainer). This reinforces the comments that maintainers work without apparent downsides but a regular charger left on continuously will kill a battery.