*Urgent help needed please*Could this just be a flat battery?

Joe_Horner

Yep, that one's fine. In fact, got one here that's been used twice a week for the past year or so to recharge a car battery I use for portable power. That's far more use than you're likely to need it for and it's still going strong

One small tip with it - the LED charge meter is a little counter-intuitive. When you connect it up to a flat battery, all the lights come on. Then they gradually go out from the right towards the left as the charge increases. When we got ours the instructions didn't make that clear so at first I thought the meter was faulty


eta: incidentally, specifying chargers by engine size is a little meaningless. It'll happily charge the battery off a 5 litre V8 if you want it to, it'll just take a little longer

WantToBeSE

Excellent, glad to hear that it works OK. Thanks Joe (and everyone else), you have been really helpful and i really appreciate it.

M0ney

It's great to see this forum has helped someone learn something that will be useful for the rest of their life and it's something that will save you money too, I'm shocked that someone quoted you £20 to "install" the battery, it could be done in about 90 seconds. Who quoted you that?

Joe_Horner

M0ney wrote: »

It's great to see this forum has helped someone learn something that will be useful for the rest of their life and it's something that will save you money too, I'm shocked that someone quoted you £20 to "install" the battery, it could be done in about 90 seconds. Who quoted you that?

To be fair, if they're used to working on modern stuff where you might find yourself having to recode the door handles, floor mats, and (optional) ashtray to the ECU afterwards I can see why they might make that a standard charge.

But if that's the case you'd hope they'd waive, or at least reduce, it for a car with older, sensible, systems!

M0ney

My car is from 2003, I'm not used to all the electronics. I'd expect any garage I bought a battery from to fit it for free.

WantToBeSE

I am going to get the charger tomorrow on my way home I really could have ended up spending a fortune if it hadnt been for this thread and the posters who helped.

Thanks Everyone

Joe_Horner

It's what the forum's for - nice to see it working

WantToBeSE

M0ney wrote: »

It's great to see this forum has helped someone learn something that will be useful for the rest of their life and it's something that will save you money too, I'm shocked that someone quoted you £20 to "install" the battery, it could be done in about 90 seconds. Who quoted you that?

That's the beauty of this forum (and others like it). I have really saved a lot of money. Someone helped me to buy a part for my tumble dryer, and i fitted it myself with a helpful post on here. Saved myself £200 as i would have had to buy a new TD else.

Re the quote, it was just from a local garage. Unfortunately, because i live in quite a rural area (it's about an hour drive to any type of halford, quik fit etc) they can get away with charging people like me (i.e. who are clueless about cars and have nobody to help them) whatever they like.

Strider590

I just want to add to this for any future reference.......

Car has been a bit sluggish starting since leaving in for 2 weeks over xmas, I easily do enough mileage to recharge it each day.
On my way home today, my dashboard failed to work (speed, rpm, odo and all dials).

(Voltage measured at 12.5v with ignition off)

Knowing this to be what happened 2 days before my last battery failure, I have just mail ordered a new Varta C10 / 047 battery for £55.

I'm just pointing out that I do practice what I preach........ I'm not just saying this sh*t for kicks

Shockingly my current battery was new in Nov 2010, but I do hear all over the web that Vauxhalls eat through car batteries. Meh

Better safe than sorry, £55 is a lot cheaper than a recovery truck.