What you need to know about car battery chargers

With around 200 ECUs in the vehicle, the battery HAVE TO be in good condition to make everything to work. Close to 50% of all the times the road assistance companies are called out – is due to a battery problem.

Let’s start with the purpose of the battery itself. Most importantly, the battery makes your car start. It does this by converting chemical energy into electricity and supplying it to the starter. After your car has started, the battery continues to work as it provides constant voltage to keep the engine running and power other accessories like the radio, lights and other electronics.

Problem arises when the battery is dead, which means the energy stored in the battery has been depleted below 11,8V. If the battery is still healthy, you can recharge it, which is basically reversing the chemical reactions that led to its depletion. CTEK chargers starts to charge at 2-3V (depending on model) Some models have a SUPPLY mode which will add energy to the battery even if the voltage is lower than 2-3V. It is gentler for the battery and the electronic components to charge than to jumpstart. We are going to show you how to recharge your battery using a battery charger. 

Getting ready

There are steps you should take before carrying out the process, to ensure your safety and smoothness of the operation. 

Make sure the area where you are charging does not have any source of flame, smoke, or sparks. Check for potentially dangerous gas leak from the battery; it will smell like rotten eggs if you sniff around. If you detect any such smell, you should abort directly and invite a professional to take over. 

You should also check to see if the battery ports are not corroded. If you see greenish substances on the ports, then corrosion has taken place. You can clean them up with a brush so that the battery won’t take longer than necessary to recharge.

Some general details about battery chargers

Now that you are ready, we shall look at how chargers work. But first, there are different types of chargers. There are AC/DC chargers, which is the type most of CTEK chargers are, that requires you to plug them into a home socket. If you don’t have a power into the charger, it is more of a jump starter (except for our CS FREE). There are battery chargers that produce lots of heat inside the battery. They are best used by trained technicians. But CTEK’s AC/DC chargers do not heat up the battery excessively. 

Most of our chargers have a gauge that lets you see both the state of the battery and the charging progress. Depending on your needs, you can get a CTEK charger that can have more elaborate safety and monitoring mechanisms built in that alerts you when there is a fault.

Now to use a car battery charger to recharge your car battery. 

How to charge your battery using a car charger

Connect the charger to the battery. But make sure the charger and the vehicle are both switched off. Then fix the positive clamp (the red one) to the positive terminal of your battery. You will see a plus (+) sign indicating the positive terminal. Next, attach the negative clamp (the black one) to any part of your vehicle’s body. It can be unsafe to connect the negative clamp to the negative terminal of your battery because in the event of a leakage of hydrogen gas, there could be an explosion when a spark is produced as you connect the negative clamp to the negative terminal of the battery. Luckily CTEK chargers are spark free. Another risk with connecting the negative clamp wrong is that most newer cars got a BMS connected on the negative pole, taking care of – for example – the Start Stop function. If charging on the negative pole the BMS will not have information about the charge and start stop function (and other ECUs) will not work as planned, with an increase of CO2 emissions as a result.

In the past, the next step should be to set up the battery charger, where you set the volts and amperes. But with a CTEK charger the charger sets itself up automatically. 

Switch on the battery charger. Some chargers require you to plug them to a power source so be sure to do that. If you do not have a CTEK charger there is a risk that it cannot stop charging automatically, then you will have to monitor the gauge to determine when the battery has been fully charged. Or you may have preset how long you want the charging to last.  But with a CTEK charger that is not a problem – it can be connected for months and months if the charger has accepted the battery as OK.

Wrapping up

Once done, turn off the charger and disconnect it from the power source if needed. With chargers that are not CTEK chargers you might need to pay attention to the process of removing the clamps because it has to be done in the reverse order to the connection steps. Remove the negative clamp (the black one) first and then the positive clamp (the red one). But with CTEK, you don’t need to think about this.
If there are no issues with your car battery or the electric wiring of the car itself, it will start with no stress.

Sometimes, your battery just won’t hold a charge and there is nothing your battery charger can do about it. In such a case, you may need to tow the car to the nearest garage or invite a technician over to examine it. It may be time for a battery replacement. But if the battery loses charge because of acid stratification – with a CTEK charger you can use RECOND mode (only for wet lead acid batteries) once or twice to prevent the acid stratification and keep the capacity higher for a longer time.

Now that we’ve got you thinking about battery chargers, why not check out these top-quality chargers from our company?