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Originally Posted by GeoffA

I have just fitted a new battery to my 2004 2.0 cdti. It's a calcium variety. What I wanted to know was what battery charger should I be looking for for it. My present one quite old. 30 years old, possibly 40 years even, and it has a question mark over it as I did on 2 or 3 occasions recently start the car with it still attached. Therefore may have shorted something inside. Can't test it. Therefore in the circumstances decided that maybe a new one would be best but don't want to spend an arm and a leg on it - up to say £45 maybe. I see that there are a dearth of chargers which one can buy. My old one was 8amps so I was thinking of looking at that power. I did see some advice to do with a Maypole product that said one should not charge a battery at more than 10% of its power. The one I bought is 75amps so that would be 7.5 amps on that basis. But some people say the more powerful it is the quicker it will charge.

So can anyone point me at a charger ( that they themselves use ) that's reliable and is certainly ok for calcium batteries ( as I understand it Calcium batteries are still lead acid but it's just they employ calcium in some way). Something of a more traditional design preferably but not exclusively ( I see that there are a lot of these .. well digital intelligent things about ). Something that's got some displays on that say what the charge rate is. Might have seperate boost setting.


thanks

Hi there Jeff.

Go to the thread on the main forum page and have a look in the ---Really, Really useful thread.

You will find several posts I put in there on batteries and charging them.

NEVER try and fast-charge a lead acid car battery.

Most of the latest battery chargers as per Lidles will do the job OK if you use and not abuse them.---