CTEK Charger and the X5?

[Crowz]

Actually the largest install base is pulsetech not ctek by far. Since the military uses pulsetech and has for years.

This is from Answer To The Question: Battery Desulfators - Do They Work? - Blog -

Some people, in the forum post that prompted this article, suggested users should use a CTEK 3300 to satisfy their sulphation needs. We do not think the CTEK charger lives up to its claim and feel it should be avoided if desulfation is your goal. In fact several years ago [November 2010] when we noticed batteries did not seem to respond, we contacted Borje the president of CTEK and he agreed to purchase a XC100-P Pulse Tech charger to do a comparative analysis. After some dialogue we never heard back from Borje or CTEK and frankly got the cold shoulder. To us this suggested our results were validated and their product was indeed inferior. Otherwise we would have expected a report showing how they outshine the competition.

[amancuso]

I have the CTEK 3300 for quite a few years and hook it up to my Z3 year round. The only confusion I have is whether to use the snowflake mode or the regular car mode.

[jsoto]

Snowflake is for AGm batteries and or if you are happen to be charging in ~really cold weather~, they say it's fine. Basically higher voltage. I would err on using snowflake only for AGM

[omodos]

Originally Posted by Salty_Dog

Thats about it jsoto

The only reason i tried RECOND mode at all, was the wonderful blurb in teh CTEK Manual telling you how you should do it ONCE A YEAR.....
Considering i had never done it, i thought i would, as the Manual made me believe i was doing a good and right thing.

BTW, since i brought this to CTEK in Swedens attention, they are re writing their manual....

Email response from CTEK Sweden here:

@Salty Dog, are you saying based on cteks email to charge the agm battery we need to set it to "motorcycle mode" so to speak and select the agm option?to charge a car battery?

[omodos]

Originally Posted by Salty_Dog

Thats about it jsoto

The only reason i tried RECOND mode at all, was the wonderful blurb in teh CTEK Manual telling you how you should do it ONCE A YEAR.....
Considering i had never done it, i thought i would, as the Manual made me believe i was doing a good and right thing.

BTW, since i brought this to CTEK in Swedens attention, they are re writing their manual....

Email response from CTEK Sweden here:

@SaltyDog can you make sense of CTEKS reply to a question I asked?they told you that you need to use MC mode+agm and they tell me to use CARmode+AGM



From: [email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of SupportMail <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, November 2, 2018 9:29 AM
Subject: Re: Product information advice on CTEK MXS-5.0 how to charge correctly and agm [ ref:_00D0Y1Ilwv._5001vlg8KQ:ref ]

Hi

You can with good result charge a 100Ah AGM battery - but you need to use CAR +AGM settings.
MC mode is too week for a 100Ah battery, charging only with 0,8A. CAR mode is charging with 5A.


Best regards
Åsa
CTEK Support

--------------- Original Message ---------------

Sent: 01/11/2018 16:48
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Product information advice on CTEK MXS-5.0 how to charge correctly and agm

resending with image i refer to in previous mail...
________________________________

Sent: Thursday, November 1, 2018 5:41 PM
To: Info.se på ctek
Subject: Product information advice on CTEK MXS-5.0 how to charge correctly and agm

Hello please advise, I have read that to safely charge a car AGM battery (100ah capacity) with the MXS 5.0 I set the charger to "motorcycle mode" and then choose the AGM option as in chart?

[alexxxa]

Hi there guys, sorry for reviving 100 years old topic, but I was searching online, and couldn't find any reasonable answer, neither in English nor German.

Concerning chargers, I have for years now some old China 5A charger and it works well when you need to charge up your battery.
But now I was thinking of getting something that I could use for some simple coding, error-reading, headlight adjustment, and other stuff where you need to have your ignition on. And this guy came up: CTEK PRO 25S (just the EU version for me). It's a 25A charger with the "supply mode."

https://www.ctek.com/uk/battery-char...room/pro25s-uk

Has anyone had any experience with it or some similar chargers?

[nick325xit 5spd]

Personally, I'd rather get a NOCO charger. I've had multiple CTEKs die on me.

Edit: I have the 10A charger / supply and several of the little 1A trickle charger / tenders.

[Clavurion]

I've used older similar 25 A model CTEK charger for many years without problems. In constant use some 7 A CTEK models have failed on me after a few years. If I would have to choose now I would probably go with Victron Energy blue smart charger.

Actually coding these older vehicles doesn't require power source. It takes such a short time and coding is not so voltage dependent. Programming/flashing is a different thing where stabile voltage is paramount.

[alexxxa]

NOCO chargers are a bit pricey here in Europe. But this Victron Energy Blue Smart IP65 12V/25A looks very interesting. And it's available here. It's even cheaper than CTEK.
I'll definitely check CTEK and Victron a bit more before I decide which one I'm gonna get.

Originally Posted by Clavurion

Actually coding these older vehicles doesn't require power source. It takes such a short time and coding is not so voltage dependent. Programming/flashing is a different thing where stabile voltage is paramount.

I agree. And for that, I would say, none of these chargers are the best (if any) option.

But since I'm still learning a few tricks here and there with various software, it happened to me more than once (with E46) to have a dead battery in the end (especially playing with ISTA-D). And once with E53, and that was pain in the a**.
Plus, when I'm on the road, the car sits sometimes for more than 3 months in the garage, so I'm kind of looking for something to kill two birds with one stone. For that these two, CTEK PRO25S and Victron IP65 12/25 sound promising.

EDIT:
With Victron, it looks like you can set voltage. If it stays stable, and you have 25 Amps you can maybe even do some more stuff than simple coding or battery charging and maintenance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrzt...el=UnboxMyLife