CTEK Battery charger

[embee]

I recently got a new-to-me car which needed the battery charge monitor system sorting out to get the stop/start system to work properly. A friend lent me his CTEK charger which was a greater current capacity than my old charger to sort it out.

Having been impressed by the CTEK, and they have a very good reputation, I decided to treat myself to a new one. Searching round I found https://www.smarterchargers.co.uk/ where the new MXS 5.0 charger was at a good price. I was sending this link to a friend today and spotted that they have an extra Black Friday discount on the MXS 5.0 so though I'd pass it on in case anyone was in the market for a charger.
The MXS 5.0 has selectable modes for bike/car, AGM, and a reconditioning mode to get the best from older batteries. Seems to work very well, I've used it on all my fleet of cars/bikes.
No connection with the company, just a customer.

[SV650rules]

If a battery far gone enough to need 'reconditioning' best advice is to buy a new battery, otherwise it will be Russian roulette whether it lets you down.... On the subject of stop-start cars and charge monitoring systems ( coulomb counting ) there is a sensor in pretty much every system, often between negative battery terminal and earth, so if you clip charger to positive and negative battery terminal the battery will charge but the monitoring circuit has not seen any charge go into battery, on my car have to connect the negative battery charger lead to the car bodywork to include current flow sensor in the circuit and make sure monitor gets the information.

[embee]

It was just a heads up on CTEK seller really.

My issue was with the stop/start system assessing that the battery charge wasn't up to operating the S/S and flagging a battery icon, even though it was fine in reality. This is a common problem with the particular car, judging by the owners' forum threads. It is solved by partly discharging the battery directly at the terminals so the monitor doesn't see it, then charging it through the charge monitor device so it thinks it has been charged more than discharged, then everything hunky-dory and it works as intended.
The "recond" function is supposed to deal with stratification and CTEK suggest once a year if the battery is used in cycles which typically result in this happening.
https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/...w%20discharges.
It's beyond my level of knowledge as to how significant this is or how well the CTEK will deal with it, I just note the info from CTEK.