Charging and Amp rating

[Guest Grahamc]

Hi

 

I have a ctek charger which has motorcycle mode and charges the battery at an Amp rating of 0.8A.

 

If I remember correctly the battery has a 2.1 or 2.5 amp bench charge rating.

 

The standard chargers you get from, say, Honda had a 2.5A rating.

 

Does it really matter what I use? As far as I know the lower the Amp rating the longer the charge time.

So long as I don't use a charger significantly higher than the battery rating I should be fine, right?

 

G

[TheEnglishman 401]

No, so long as it charges.

just because a charger can deliver more charging current doesn't necessarily mean it does. There's nothing wrong or bad about using a 12v truck battery charger on a motorcycle battery. ok so most trucks are 24v but you get the gist.

For infrequent, low mileage motorcycle riders (the vast majority) it's more important to keep the battery fully charged as much as possible.

[JONO49 201]

Your Ctek battery charger is the "Intelligent" type and will vary the amp/hour rating to suit and will do just fine

[embee 7,288]

As a rough rule of thumb, most automotive lead acid batteries like to be charged at about 10% of the Amp-hour rating. Most typical mid size bike batteries are in the parish of 10-12Ah, so around 1amp is ideal. As said, the ctek should be an intelligent charger so will charge at what it thinks best, ramping the rate down as the charge rises. It's not usually critical for typical domestic use.

[ste7ios 469]

The normal charge rating for a lead acid battery is 0.1C, i.e. for YTZ-12S (11Ah) is 1.1A.

It can tolerate up to 0.5C i.e. 5.5A but it's not suggested because it may cause gassing etc that shortens battery's life.

Read your chargers' manuals to see what you can charge and what not.

[Guest sykospain]

Yes, the C-Tek 'intelligent' variable-output charger unit is one of many alternatives to the much publicised Optimate.

 

Whenever the bike's in the garage or wherever, unused for more than a coupla days, plug in the intelligent charger, also known in the accessory market as a battery monitor.

[ste7ios 469]

Even smart chargers / maintainers will charge a specific range of battery capacities. For example ctek MXS 7.0 (7A charger) will charge safely batteries from 14 Ah to 225 Ah.

Your ctek XS 0.8 will charge batteries from 1.2Ah to 32Ah, and maintain capacities up to 100Ah.

http://www.ctek.com/gr/en/page/support/faq

http://www.ctek.com/gr/en/chargers/XS%200.8