I replaced my 7 year old Jaguar battery 2 months ago although the battery was still good. I've never had any electrical issues with my car since purchasing it 4 years ago. My new walmart battery has been hooked up to a CTEK Mus 4.3 constantly. The car has been in the garage for the last 30 days undriven. Anyone familiar with the CTEK Mus 4.3 will know that it has 8 steps of charging and has been on step 7 for quite some time as fully charged. I recently replaced my CTEK 3300 with this maintainer. When checking my car yesterday I noticed it was on step 5 (analyse) with the error lamp on. It was completely dead. I happened to notice that there was a power outage in the house recently. When I tried to reset the CTEK it would not allow me to charge the battery. How does a new battery die in less than 2 months especially when it is hooked up to a battery maintainer? As of a week ago it showed fully charged. I went out and exchanged the battery for another new one but I'm concerned about any electrical issues with the car. Is it just a fluke that I got a bad battery? Could the electrical outage have effected the maintainer in any way to cause the battery to die? I now have the new battery connected to my earlier CTEK 3300 just in case it was a bad maintainer. My car has 9900 miles on it. I'll be keeping an eye on it. Anyone with a clue? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

 

It seems that you are wondering whether the Walmart battery was at fault or the CTEK was at fault.

Do you have a digital multimeter available so that you can obtain some data about this situation? For example, what voltage does the CTEK produce while the new battery is receiving a charge, and how does that change when the CTEK is on step 7?

Although it is too late now that you've returned the failed battery, it would be good to know what voltage it produced at the time that the CTEK refused to charge it.

Certainly it is possible that if your home had a power outage which resulted in a voltage surge, that could cause the CTEK to fail.

Another use of the multimeter is that you can hook it up to measure quiescent current draw when the car is IG-OFF and locked, since you have a residual concern about whether the vehicle electronics are placing an unusual current drain on the battery.

 

One of the keys to troubleshooting is to look back at what was last changed. That appears to be both the CTEK and the battery in this case.

Batteries are fairly low tech & one would think that issues with new ones would seem to be uncommon but not unheard of. Maybe have it checked for dead cells to see if it is in fact bad, if you still have it.

I don't have a CTEK but those are smart devices that should be imune to power failure problems. If you have replaced the battery with a new one again then your only option would be to interrogate between the two CTEKs. You might try to simulate a power failure with the CTEKs, once they have reached battery maintnance level, to see how they react. Logically wouldn't you expect it to go through it's diagnostice routine then settle back to a maintenance level?

Note though, power failures are often not "clean" usually having severe short term repetative power spikes that can really muddy things up in electronics. (We use an all house surge conditioner in our service panel to help mitigate that issue)

From the hip though, I would hold the 4.3 suspect until proven otherwise. Others here may have better ideas though.

 

BOCATRIP,
I have learnt it is not too smart to do 2 things at once! But here is how to recover!
Check voltage of current set up............if OK (12.6-12.7 or above) remove the old CTEK and then connect the new one and wait 2-3 weeks to see if battery retains it's voltage. If it does, then you have 2 good CTEK's; if not, that's the problem!
The odds of 2 bad batteries is very remote!
I have had very good luck with WalMart batteries..................
Hope this helps,
Cheers,Adrian

 

 

 

I have a volt meter at my plug for the Ctek. I just looked at it today and because I have not been able to take the car out the unit is on stage 8 and the volt meter reads 12.9 volts. I believe when it hits 12.6 it goes back into step 7 and that charge level is at 13.7 volts. I have had 4-5 power drops this winter and i hasn't affected the Ctek. When you got your new battery did you put it on a 10 amp or better charger for 4-6 hours .

 

I'm going with power outage caused the CTEK to wonk out and it ended up draining the battery instead of maintaining it.

 

"7. Float Maintenance
After reconditioning, the voltage and the current level off to maintain a floating charge of 13.6 volts to keep your battery topped off. At this stage, your battery will fully charge to 100%. The float charge will remain active for up to 10 days.

8. Pulse Maintenance
Float maintenance is fine, but not for extended periods of time. If this battery is sitting in your classic and you’re storing it for the winter, you don’t want to leave it on float charge. This could cause overcharging, which can lead to the stratification problems above. It also increases the risk of boiling or drying out. Bad news.

CTEK’s solution is the pulse charge, which is healthier for your battery and doesn’t waste energy. It offers short pulses of power when the battery power drops- as needed. It will keep a battery charged at 95-99% for months.

CTEK Battery Chargers holds the patent on the only chargers to offer both float charging and pulse charging."

Source: The 8 Stages of a CTEK Battery Charger | The Streetside Garage

 

No. I had no time and just had my Indy pull out the old and replace with the new.

 

Ranchero......This is exactly what I'm hoping for at this time. A few days before discovering the dead battery...(maybe 10 or less days) the CTEK was showing stage 7 as fully charged. I checked again in 2 or 3 days and I saw it at 5 but didn't investigate further. I returned a few days later to still see it at 5 with the trouble light. It was at this time I found out my car was dead as a door nail. Possibly a week or even more had gone by with the trouble light but I can't be certain. Once I discovered the battery was dead...I went inside the house to see that there had been an outage (all electrical clocks were flashing on appliances) but I can't be certain the actual time it occurred. Power outages here in Florida can have some abrupt surges when the power is restored. I'm thinking that might have wacked out the CTEK 4.3 to drain the battery. I don't have a backup battery surge protector, but I'm thinking now of getting one just for the garage. It is an interesting theory and hoping that is the problem (or a defective battery) as the 4.3 presently is working fine while charging my Lexus tonight and showing stage 7 as fully charged. To be continued......I'll keep the forum posted.

 

If the Ctek is working correctly now it wasn't affected by a power outage. Every time you unplug the Ctek and plug it in again it starts the charge cycle all over again. Even if for a second it goes back to step 1 and through the sequence until it is at full charge or until it gets to a point where it can't charge the battery . Since I have had my Ctek I must have had 10 to 20 power outages and never had a problem with the Ctek and it is on a regular unprotected outlet. So unless you got a large line spike I can't see it being affected. And if you did get a power spike I suspect you would have had to buy some new appliances.

 

Jagtoes....I would tend to agree with you...however the 4.3 was showing fully charged a week earlier after being on that battery for 3 weeks or more and suddenly out of no where goes to 5 and just dies? Hmmmm...gremlins can come and go but that quickly? I'm still considering the outage as a catalyst and/or just a defective battery that decided to take a crap? Of course with time I'll know with more certainty. Thanks Jagtoes and everyone else for their great imput. Once again I will keep the forum informed.

 

Just as a side note........I went to BJs last week and purchased an in home battery backup with surge protection in case of the many outages we have here in Florida. I attached my CTEK 3300 to the battery backup in the garage. This way, I can eliminate the next outage (which happened today) as a possible culprit for affecting the charging or overall health of my Jaguar's battery with the maintainer in the future. . So far, no further issues.