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Post by Fogg on Jan 17, 2024 13:09:21 GMT 12
The other day mum appeared with a nasty little courtesy car from her local garage (Demio?).
Anyway, being old and unfamiliar with car she left headlights on overnight which killed it. When I took a look yesterday it was so dead it made a Dodo look the picture of health.
So out comes the charger - and this is where it gets confusing. Connect my normal CTEK charger which does my Discovery fine when needed. After a few seconds thinking about it, it flashes a confused code and then goes dead.
Suspecting the charger I get my wife’s which is same model and charges her X3 fine. Same result.
Last resort I find another AA approved smart charger in the garage which looks newish & modern and has more modes than the CTEK including Gel, AGM, Wet and Calcium.
By now - I google this little car’s Endurant battery and I’m surprised to see the tech spec is flooded calcium. So I optimistically set charging mode to ‘Calcium’, reconnect and wait. Same result. This battery refuses to accept a charge from any unit in any mode.
So this morning I simply jump started it from the Discovery and it came to life immediately. Obviously it’s own alternator has a much better relationship with the battery than any charger.
Confused! 🤔
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Post by sabre on Jan 17, 2024 13:38:57 GMT 12
Was it dead flat? If so the charger may as well be hooked up to a block of wood as far as it is concerned.
I have bought batteries back to life by connecting a good battery to the dead battery until the charger recognised it as a battery and away it went.
Ps nothing wrong with a demio. Good little cars.
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Post by eri on Jan 17, 2024 13:45:14 GMT 12
smart chargers can outsmart themselves
like these smart air pumps at gas stations need air pressure to start, modern chargers seem to need a residual voltage before the logic allows them to work
in the car of your mother's car, possibly letting the battery sit for 30min undisturbed after the lights have been turned off may allow the voltage in the cells to bounce-back to an acceptable 9?volts for the smart charger
older dumb chargers don't have this issue...but they don't know when to turn off, so aren't idiot proof
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Post by Fogg on Jan 17, 2024 14:54:44 GMT 12
I think that was the problem ie it was dead flat not just low. Somehow leaving the lights on for a few hours did that. Probably due to the battery being v small?
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Post by ComfortZone on Jan 17, 2024 15:37:40 GMT 12
Ps nothing wrong with a demio. Good little cars. Aren't they the most stolen car in NZ   ? |
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Post by Fogg on Jan 17, 2024 16:32:52 GMT 12
I reckon if you listed every car model here you would find someone who either loves it or hates it (usually for emotional or nostalgic reasons)!
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Post by sabre on Jan 17, 2024 17:06:26 GMT 12
Ps nothing wrong with a demio. Good little cars. Aren't they the most stolen car in NZ ? Yep extremely popular with the younger tiktok community. Mind you I wouldn't leave one sitting around unlocked near a green MP to be fair.. |
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Post by sabre on Jan 17, 2024 17:18:59 GMT 12
I reckon if you listed every car model here you would find someone who either loves it or hates it (usually for emotional or nostalgic reasons)! For sure. Never owned a Demio but bought one for a step son. Great car that cost nothing to run. Unfortunately he swapped it for a severely molested civic much to his regret when he took it for a warrant. Mrs has had two vitz' over the last 12 years which are much the same as the demio. Bloody good car. Currently has a very nice 2L impreza but thats likely to get changed back to a vitz before too long apparently. |
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Post by Fogg on Jan 17, 2024 17:26:21 GMT 12
Ps nothing wrong with a demio. Good little cars. Aren't they the most stolen car in NZ ? Which must make kiwi car-thief’s the most taste-less bunch in NZ. |
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Post by GO30 on Jan 17, 2024 17:40:21 GMT 12
smart chargers can outsmart themselves like these smart air pumps at gas stations need air pressure to start, modern chargers seem to need a residual voltage before the logic allows them to work in the car of your mother's car, possibly letting the battery sit for 30min undisturbed after the lights have been turned off may allow the voltage in the cells to bounce-back to an acceptable 9?volts for the smart charger older dumb chargers don't have this issue...but they don't know when to turn off, so aren't idiot proof Our man eri has it spot on. The new fancy chargers struggle with dead as a Dodo.
I drained a motorbike battery and I have some fancy as chargers but now would touch it. On advice I connected another OK battery to the dead one and tried the charger again, boom we were off. After a few minutes disconnected the OK battery and the charger sorted out the Dodo perfectly.
My newish ute will start flashing me battery warnings after only 5 odd minutes if I turn the car off but are still using the ph or have it powered up. A few minutes later it turns itself off whether I like it or not.
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Post by fish on Jan 17, 2024 18:50:12 GMT 12
The other day mum appeared with a nasty little courtesy car from her local garage (Demio?). Anyway, being old and unfamiliar with car she left headlights on overnight which killed it. When I took a look yesterday it was so dead it made a Dodo look the picture of health. So out comes the charger - and this is where it gets confusing. Connect my normal CTEK charger which does my Discovery fine when needed. After a few seconds thinking about it, it flashes a confused code and then goes dead. Suspecting the charger I get my wife’s which is same model and charges her X3 fine. Same result. Last resort I find another AA approved smart charger in the garage which looks newish & modern and has more modes than the CTEK including Gel, AGM, Wet and Calcium. By now - I google this little car’s Endurant battery and I’m surprised to see the tech spec is flooded calcium. So I optimistically set charging mode to ‘Calcium’, reconnect and wait. Same result. This battery refuses to accept a charge from any unit in any mode. So this morning I simply jump started it from the Discovery and it came to life immediately. Obviously it’s own alternator has a much better relationship with the battery than any charger. Confused! 🤔 As mentioned, that is when the battery is too flat. The fancy chargers can't handle it. I've seen battery chargers advertise how fancy they are by pulsing a voltage to get completely dead batteries back to life. Think they call bouncing it or something. I think it is when you have multi-stage chargers and they assess the voltage against what stage they are supposed to be at and how many ergs they should be giving the battery. When there is 'no' voltage, the computer fails to compute, and just says no. I'd say jumping from you Discovery circumvented all that and just gave it the ergs it needed. The then Demio's alternator would just let rip. I'm fairly sure all car alternators are dumb and just give them 14.4v. Incidentally the calcium battery is the standard in most cars now. I think they need a higher charge than 14.4 too, possible a minimum of 14.8. I think the calcium tech is popular / used for modern cars with the auto-stop function. We replaced the start battery on the boat last winter, went down the full rabbit whole of batteries, battery technology and matching the required charging voltage with my new lead-carbon house batts (which are the ducks nuts incidentally). As far as I could tell, all marine start batteries are also the calcium tech, hence needing the 14.8v not the 14.4 bulk charge. Finding actual charging parameters was damn near impossible though. I think I tried finding and older tech start batt (one I could understand) and just gave up. The batt I went for cost $220 so not the end of the world if it doesn't last 10 years. |
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Post by Fogg on Jan 17, 2024 18:57:05 GMT 12
Ok, so now I’m curious (in fact I’m always curious which is a curiosity in its own right).
Anyway. In a minute I’m going to see what happens if I try reconnecting the chargers to the Demio now it’s back home after a day of running around normally on its own alternator charge.
Stand by…
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Post by Fogg on Jan 17, 2024 19:14:13 GMT 12
Yup there you go all plugged in.
Now the battery is good enough it doesn’t need a charge, the charger is happy to oblige.
What’s the freaking point in a charger then, if it can’t get you out of a hole with a fully flat battery?!
Why don’t they have a ‘resurrect the dead’ button?
It could just be labelled “Press for God”.
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Post by GO30 on Jan 17, 2024 19:46:36 GMT 12
Ok, so now I’m curious in fact I’m always curious So would that make you Bi-curious?
Curiosity rocks, I love the shit. It makes learning by osmosis so much fun.
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Post by fish on Jan 17, 2024 21:30:47 GMT 12
Yup there you go all plugged in. Now the battery is good enough it doesn’t need a charge, the charger is happy to oblige. What’s the freaking point in a charger then, if it can’t get you out of a hole with a fully flat battery?! Why don’t they have a ‘resurrect the dead’ button? It could just be labelled “Press for God”. Did you read the manual? You usually have to really dig to find the information you need. It is possible one of the three chargers you have covers it, says it can't do it, or actually has the 'resurrect the dead' button. I'll bet a good bottle of whiskey you don't have the manuals for a battery charger though, it's not the sort of thing you'd normally think important. That, and I always end up googling the manual, as there is a very high chance if I have kept it, I can't remember which super safe place I put it. Not wanting to bag C-Tek, but they seemed to be targeted at the lowest common denominator. I found the information about bounce charging when I was digging our on a Victron site for something else. Possibly when I was sussing DC-DC chargers for a possible lithium house batt install. Reinforced my opinion that Victron is top shelf gear. |
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