Berlingo Forum

In case anyone's interested, it's back on sale...

https://www.lidl.co.uk/p/car-essentials/...ger/p47162

These are fantastic, the older grey model has pulled me out of a hole numerous times. In fact if the booster pack crops up, definitely grab one of those too!

Good find! For that price I might go and get it in case my rather expensive Halfrauds charger packs up.

Looks a good price but in reality, how often do you guys have flat batteries?

(12-11-2021, 08:10 AM)Tree Wrote: [ -> ]Looks a good price but in reality, how often do you guys have flat batteries?

I prefer to give my battery a decent charger every now and then to keep it in optimal condition and extend the lifespan. Sometimes I do not do that much long journeys.

(12-11-2021, 08:23 AM)saskak Wrote: [ -> ]I prefer to give my battery a decent charger every now and then to keep it in optimal condition and extend the lifespan. Sometimes I do not do that much long journeys.

As I often only drive my M49 enough to stop the battery going flat, I'm curious how far a vehicle needs driving to recharge the battery? I usually drive it about once a week (longest I've left it undriven is a fortnight), but sometimes only for 4-5 miles.  So far it's always started absolutely fine.

(12-11-2021, 08:32 AM)notsofast Wrote: [ -> ]

(12-11-2021, 08:23 AM)saskak Wrote: [ -> ]I prefer to give my battery a decent charger every now and then to keep it in optimal condition and extend the lifespan. Sometimes I do not do that much long journeys.

As I often only drive my M49 enough to stop the battery going flat, I'm curious how far a vehicle needs driving to recharge the battery? I usually drive it about once a week (longest I've left it undriven is a fortnight), but sometimes only for 4-5 miles.  So far it's always started absolutely fine.

I am not an expert in battery lifespan/charge and it depends on a lot of things. Size of battery (Ah), alternator condition, how good the battery was to begin with, sulphation, temperature, etc. I use a battery tester to check the condition of my battery. After frequent short journeys, the CCA and internal impedance drop quite considerably. A decent battery charge afterwards brings it back to the maximum level. I bought a super duper 770CCA exide battery, but I suspect it was sitting in the shop for quite some time as the tester on the new battery read ~80-82% state of health and that was the maximum. I think the battery sat for so long before being sold that there has been some irreversible sulphation. With time this now has dropped to ~75-77% and CCA to ~650. 650CCA is still enough to crank the car, but with a cold weather spell you never know.
IMHO 4-5 miles is unlikely to top it up sufficiently.

My wife probably only does 10 miles most days in our C4GP - i did change the battery this year but purely because it was six years old and the stop start had stopped functioning.

Otherwise it was no problem whatsoever. I have found when we have had a battery die on us it is usually straight after a journey with no warning and no matter how much charging you do, that battery is never coming back.

Gone are the days in reality of slow cranking due to the battery - they're either good or bad.

I was looking for a Lidl charger earlier in the year but there were none left. I got one from Aldi which was faulty & returned it. In the end, I got a charger from OnBuy which has worked quite well and arrived in good time ..
https://www.onbuy.com/gb/12v-intelligent...p21474300/

The OnBuy search is a bit odd but I also found this one in a different section
https://www.onbuy.com/gb/12v-intelligent...p21474300/

The clear advantage with Lidl is that if you have a problem, you can take it back. Must say that I'm tempted to get one for the pulse charge feature, although I already have 3 chargers so can't really justify it.

, I did some reading about pulse charging to recover batteries. From what I read, I got the impression that it does have a positive effect on partially sulfated batteries, maybe worth a try.

(12-11-2021, 09:23 AM)cancunia Wrote: [ -> ]I was looking for a Lidl charger earlier in the year but there were none left. I got one from Aldi which was faulty & returned it. In the end, I got a charger from OnBuy which has worked quite well and arrived in good time ..
https://www.onbuy.com/gb/12v-intelligent...p21474300/

The OnBuy search is a bit odd but I also found this one in a different section
https://www.onbuy.com/gb/12v-intelligent...p21474300/

The clear advantage with Lidl is that if you have a problem, you can take it back. Must say that I'm tempted to get one for the pulse charge feature, although I already have 3 chargers so can't really justify it.

, I did some reading about pulse charging to recover batteries. From what I read, I got the impression that it does have a positive effect on partially sulfated batteries, maybe worth a try.

Yes, I read about the pulse charge and had a go with a repair function with Noco Genius 5 on my battery (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtQ8fgvTkW8), but this did absolutely nothing. I did it multiple times, but it could not bring back the lost CCAs unfortunately.