Battery Charger for car

vicwatson

A few times my battery has gone flat where the lights/radio has been left on etc, it's an E39 BMW, just wondering can anyone tell me the type of portable charger I can buy to keep in the boot, voltage/amps are important here i imagine? And where is the cheapest/best place to buy one?

Thanks in advance

pa990

a cheap booster pack from lidl/aldi kept charged and stored in your boot should help you out.

but you may need a new battery

rebel.ranter

Hi vicwatson, you say your car is an e39? There is a known fault with these that causes battery drain. It is down to a failed resostor pack for the heating system called the "Final Stage Unit", also called "hedgehog resistor". When it fails it can cause some or all of the following issues:
- Heater controls not functioning
- Heater not working or working erratically
- Heater fan runs on after the car is shut off
- Drained battery after a short period of non-use
- Lazy starting after a period of non-use

The e39 is meant to go in to sleep mode after 16 minutes once you turn the car off. If there is something like the heater fan running (it can be very low, you might not even hear it), the car doesn't get to go into sleep mode & the control modules on the CAN bus are constantly sent "keep alive" messages draining the battery even further.

You can buy spurious FSUs from EBay & the likes but the quality is crap. You're better off with an OEM unit (supplied by a BMW dealer), they are ~€35 spurious & ~€80 genuine. There's loads of DIY guides on the net as to how to change this unit, all you need is a Phillips screw driver & fingers!

BatteryCharger/Maintainer
As for a battery charger/maintainer, Ring make a decent unit called the Ring RSC 512. It has a charge function (automatic or at different rates), desulphate function (for recovering damaged batteries) & a maintainer function (float charge for leaving the unit connected indefinitely).
Halfords sell this unit for about €75. Its not on thier website but you'll get it in store. I personally have two of these units, one hooked up permanently to a car I have in storage & another for topping up a car I have on the driveway that doesn't get frequent use. I would get a decent quality unit like this or a CTek unit, BMW themselves sell a BMW branded battery maintainer which is in fact a CTek unit.
Hope this helps.

vicwatson

pa990 wrote: »

a cheap booster pack from lidl/aldi kept charged and stored in your boot should help you out.

but you may need a new battery

Thanks, are there any issues with different types from a voltage/ampage perspective with the Lidl/Aldi ones?

The battery is fine, this has happened to me after getting a brand new battery installed last time

vicwatson

rebel.ranter wrote: »

Hi vicwatson, you say your car is an e39? There is a known fault with these that causes battery drain. It is down to a failed resostor pack for the heating system called the "Final Stage Unit", also called "hedgehog resistor". When it fails it can cause some or all of the following issues:
- Heater controls not functioning
- Heater not working or working erratically
- Heater fan runs on after the car is shut off
- Drained battery after a short period of non-use
- Lazy starting after a period of non-use

The e39 is meant to go in to sleep mode after 16 minutes once you turn the car off. If there is something like the heater fan running (it can be very low, you might not even hear it), the car doesn't get to go into sleep mode & the control modules on the CAN bus are constantly sent "keep alive" messages draining the battery even further.

You can buy spurious FSUs from EBay & the likes but the quality is crap. You're better off with an OEM unit (supplied by a BMW dealer), they are ~€35 spurious & ~€80 genuine. There's loads of DIY guides on the net as to how to change this unit, all you need is a Phillips screw driver & fingers!

BatteryCharger/Maintainer
As for a battery charger/maintainer, Ring make a decent unit called the Ring RSC 512. It has a charge function (automatic or at different rates), desulphate function (for recovering damaged batteries) & a maintainer function (float charge for leaving the unit connected indefinitely).
Halfords sell this unit for about €75. Its not on thier website but you'll get it in store. I personally have two of these units, one hooked up permanently to a car I have in storage & another for topping up a car I have on the driveway that doesn't get frequent use. I would get a decent quality unit like this or a CTek unit, BMW themselves sell a BMW branded battery maintainer which is in fact a CTek unit.
Hope this helps.

Thanks Rebel, I'll do a bit of research into it.

It's happened where I left the cd player/radio on when say I'm cleaning the car, and as recently as last week when sitting in the car listening to the radio. It's a pain in the arse, going around with leads in the boot incase it happens and having to call someone to give me a jump start - and ther is no issues at all going on from that, once I get a jump it's all grand and I have no further issues until the next time the radio/fan or whatever else drains the battery.

vicwatson

Can you guys tell me what voltage/ampage charger I need to be on the look out for. That Ring one is over €75.00, hard to justify for something I'll use ince in a blue moon hopefully.

Am prepared to pay up to €50.00 for one to kick start the car, any advice on which one/where I might get one?

Thanks again

vicwatson

Coincidentally, I see this on Aldi's website this evening, as pa990 suggested



Would this fit the bill for my battery problem?

cargo

Yeah what you are after is a "Booster or Jump-start" pack like the one you linked to above. A battery charger is for* slowly recharging a battery over a 12-24 hour period and not for jump starting a car in a hurry when you've flattened it away from home.

I remember driving a older 7 series beemer and it was always running the battery down. The electrics would be winding down for an hour after the car stopped. Loads of little motors whirring away under the dash doing god know what :-)

I had that very one above and it was fine for what you describe or inflating a flat tyre. I still have mine but lost the mains charger and i reckon the internal batteries are kaput by now. (remember to top it up every so often. It comes with a cigarette charger also which would be handy for this)

*You can get high end battery chargers with a "jump-start" function but these would be in the '00 and would be for more profession setups and you would still need to plug into mains for this to work.

pete4130

I've something like this that in keep in my Landcruiser in case I ever get stuck when I go camping/4WD/bush here in Australia. I don't have the room for a charger so this is a compromise for me if both my batteries happen to die (which I stupidly let happen in the past, 40km from the nearest road...thankfully a Nissan Patrol came to my rescue).

The one I have can be plugged into the 12v socket in the car and will charge the battery that way (some cars might need the key turned to activate the 12V socket) and it also has clamps for placing it directly on the battery.

It is only a trickle charge and not necessarily what your looking for but its small and handy to have with you if you knew your battery wasn't the greatest and you left it on the dash during the day...just in case?

bmstuff

rebel.ranter wrote: »

You can buy spurious FSUs from EBay & the likes but the quality is crap. You're better off with an OEM unit (supplied by a BMW dealer), they are ~€35 spurious & ~€80 genuine. There's loads of DIY guides on the net as to how to change this unit, all you need is a Phillips screw driver & fingers!
.

One from the dealer costs around 120-140 euros actually. They increased their price sometime ago.
I recently recommended a customer to get an Hella one since they are the same as the dealer, but a lot cheaper. I think he paid around 50-60£ at the end, delivered to Dublin from the UK