CTEK D250S Dual

[Beucam]

[QUOTE=the evil twin;558422]
My suggestions are as follows;
-The CTEK charge voltage is not high enough for AGM so every 3 months or after some extended camping make sure you wack an AGM charger on the battery that will give it around 14.8 float.


Hi ET,

I would like to try understand what you mean when saying that CTEK charge voltage is not high enough.
If i look at CTEK205 specs they have a 20A charging current. When i compare this to the Redarc BCDC1225, they indicate 25A. Would this DCDC charger also be too small, or does it all come down to battery use.

Thanks for all the valuable input.

Tx,
Shane

[the evil twin]

My bad, I meant to say Absorbtion not Float, AGM's like a higher Absorption Charge Voltage than Floodeds

We were discussing longevity etc previously in the thread and every 3 months or so it is good practice to put large capacity deep cycles on a Charger that will bring the SOC up as close as possible to 100% esp if they are going to sit for a while.
You will get a longer service life for sure.

I think you may also be confusing the current rating with the charging voltage of a Charger.
The two are unrelated as such in that the current determines how quickly the battery will be recharged and the Voltage is one factor in many that determines the state of charge it will reach.

Bottom line is that there isn't all that much difference between the Redarc and Ctek and once the battery charge acceptance rate drops below 20 amps then they are the same IE just because the Charger will do 20 amps doesn't mean the Battery will take 20 amps.
Charge acceptance rate drops significantly as a battery approachs a charged state and there is nothing the Charger can do about it.

[mudski]

Sorry for the thread dig...What is the D250s like in comparison to the Redarc BCDC1225? I have the 1225 in my camper and I think I should be replacing the SBi12 in the car to keep the batteries, in particular the Aux battery charged better. As from my understanding the SBi12 won't fully charge the battery, only to around 80%. Whereas the above to will?

I have my eye on the D250s as it is a little cheaper and looks to be easier to instal, it looks smaller than the 1225 but having never seen one I don't know about that.
I'm just keeping my options open at the moment, but want to do something about it early in the week. As I think I have killed my deep cycle aux battery on our last two week camping trip, which ain't that old...
FYI, I run the winch of the cranker battery, and have 2B&S sized cable to the SBi12 then onto the aux deep cycle. Even if the SBi12 is good enough I will keep it, or even upgrade to the SBi12D.

[Agronaught]

I prefer the ctek. I especially like the feature where it switches to charge the main battery when the aux is full.

[mudski]

As I run an Anderson plug down the back to plug off the cranking battery into the campers bcdc1225 when towing. Will this affect the ctek at all if I install one under the bonnet? Im wondering if the ctek or the redarc will get confused, so to speak, when I plugthe trailer in?

[the evil twin]

Nah, it'll be fine

[mudski]

Thanks. I need a new battery. I can get 105AH Supercharge deep cycle for the third of the price of a full river of the same size. Only because I have an account with Supercharge... Is the Full River that much better? Does the full river handle the drain a lot better than the Supercharge? Or what makes the FullRivers so good? Or should I look at something else?

[the evil twin]

Thanks. I need a new battery. I can get 105AH Supercharge deep cycle for the third of the price of a full river of the same size. Only because I have an account with Supercharge... Is the Full River that much better? Does the full river handle the drain a lot better than the Supercharge? Or what makes the FullRivers so good? Or should I look at something else?

I wouldn't rate Fullriver (Chinnee) 3 times better than Supercharge (Phillipino?).
Better, yes but not 3 times as much ameliorated over time for a reccy user.
I have gotten excellent results from Full River over the years in Industrial applications (and my camper ones are nearly 6 years old now) and reasonable results from Supercharge in vehicles but I now feel CAT are better as a cranker

Battery quality pretty much comes down to Material purity,Plate thickness, Seperator quality and construction.
Battery longevity pretty much comes down to the user choosing the right spec and doing the right thing.

Fullriver have an excellent rep and make an enormous array of batteries and did cop an unfair rap a while back when people were putting their Standby Industrial Deep Cycle batteries (max temp rating of 55 deg) under the bonnet as Aux's and cooking them.
The industrial batteries were cheaper than vehicle rated ones so people were not looking past the price for suitability then howling they were duds meanwhile the vehicle batts of same capacity etc were going gangbusters.

Bottom line - I'd buy the Supercharge in your case, if it was going in one of my remote telemetry stations in Wheredpukisthat in remote WA maybe not.

[mudski]

Thanks. This may save me a lot of coin. But I'm not 100% sure the aux I have is buggered. I have a load tester I can use to test it. As the deep cycle doesn't have a CCA rating, and the load tester goes by CCA, I was told by Supercharge to test it as a 500CCA rated battery. Fully charged I ran the load tester on it and it failed. Although I'm not entirely convinced this is correct. I might go down to their warehouse and get them to test it. Or something....

[the evil twin]

Hmmm... doesn't sound too good esp if it failed the load test big time.

How old is it?
You might get it back to a ueable state if you have a decent charger with a "recond" mode.
Won't be 100% tho