My new to me XK came with a Deltran Battery Maintainer Plus fitted. I’ve never heard of them. My F-Type has a CTEK fitted. Has anyone here used the Deltran system? Online reviews look positive, but I’d prefer a personal reference. I’m out of town for a month, and don’t want to fry the battery!

 

They’re rubbish, bin it and get a proper CTEK.

 

I’ve had good luck with mine, but it’s the metal cased one that was sold by Costco. Heard bad things about the plastic cased ones. I actually have 2 of the metal ones, one for my XK, and the other for my Lexus. Used it on my XK for seven years with no issues.

 

Many years ago I had a Deltran Battery Tender Junior that overheated and melted the plastic case. It could have burned my house down.

Read all the negative reviews on Amazon. Throw that POS away, buy a CTEK and don't worry.

 

One day I smelled the plastic starting to melt...into the trash for me. I do have several harbor freight units along with cteck... time will tell.
wj

 

I have this one:

CTEK - 40-206 MXS 5.0 Fully Automatic 4.3 amp Battery Charger and Maintainer 12V

This works great on my car going on 3 years.

 

I have used the standard metal cased Deltran Battery Tender for years without problems, still works fine. I have heard many horror stories about the Battery Tender Jr. with the plastic case.

 

The CTEK’s much more sophisticated at reconditioning AGM and flooded batteries.

 

There's two main considerations 1) you need enough amperage to cover the maximum potential current draw, plus a little extra if in case all of the car's systems (except computer memory, clock and security systems) don't shut down and 2) you want a "smart" charger with circuitry designed to detect charging problems and shut down if something is dangerously wrong with the battery, the car's electrical system or the line power supply. Here on this forum, the CTEK units are recommended because they put out like 4-5amps which is plenty and they will detect and shut themselves off for a range of electrical problems. I used to not know this and learned both lessons individually "the hard way", just lucky I didn't burn the garage down or get injured in the explosion. No more "budget" battery maintainers for me.

And after committing to that, ironically I won a 3 amp "Everstart" brand battery maintainer ($20) as a door prize at a car show just last weekend. I had recently bought another classic car that I could use another maintainer, but I'm afraid of this free one and I'm afraid to give it away and let anybody else use it either. Maybe somebody could use it for an electric fence or gate opener battery, but I'd be afraid to plug a $40K car into it or leave it plugged in unattended inside a building.

Not all of the Deltran units are bad, but if its the 1.25amp unit, then that's not enough amps for when your modern car's computer fails to shut down. I'd ditch it and get another CTEK.

 

When I purchase a motorcycle it came with a Ctek trickle charger. The Ctek unit ran very hot when plugged it. I thought it was faulty so I threw it out.
I didn't want to risk the Ctek causing a fire in the garage and burning down my MC collection.
I got a Gooloo (yeah stupid name) unit from Amazon as this trickle charger can do, std, AGM, and Lithium batteries and can also output 12v 6A to act as a backup source when changing out the battery. I use lithium batteries for all my MC.
I tested the Gooloo with a 12VDC AGM battery and connected a scope (oscilloscope) to the battery and data log over 48 hours of trickle charging. I found that the Gooloo unit was on point reconditioning and maintaining the battery.