Hi everyone.

I picked up my 2007 4.2 XK yesterday and as I'm only going to be driving it 2 or 3 times a week I want to hardwire a CTEK charger just to be safe. The problem is the car is parked outside on my driveway and I'm not sure how I would leave it to charge locked outside especially when it rains. I saw they have a 2.5m extension cable but that would barely or not even make it to the door and I'm guessing the main unit should be kept inside dry. Any advice would be much appreciated. Thank you.

 

My F-Type lives outside, due to the ‘07 XK, and 78 MGB taking up the garage bays. I use a CTEK on the F-Type in all weather with no problems. I tuck the extension cord connection under the passenger door, and the unit under the rear wheel. Just have to remember to remove it when I unleash the beast!

 

Interesting choice on the outside car

 

You can get extension cables, for example:

I’m sure you can find varying lengths. I have 3 extra 25’ SAE style cables that I can use to reach just about anywhere on the driveway if needed for my Deltran battery tenders, and you can get Ctek to SAE adapters for a few bucks (which I use with my XK, so I don’t have to swap out the old SAE to eyelets cable, with the new Ctek to eyelets cable).

 

Welcome to the Forum, Adam! I see that you're in GB, and hope you enjoy your XK as much as I've enjoyed mine!

I recommend that you use a single, outdoor-rated extension cord that is long enough to reach from the wall to your CTEK. You don't have to hardwire your CTEK directly to the battery terminals. It's much easier to use the remote battery terminals in the boot. I attached my CTEK to those terminals using the alligator clips supplied with my CTEK. The wire fits under the boot when closed, and you can put your CTEK on top of the passenger side rear tire to keep it dry. I replaced my old maintainer with a CTEK when I replaced my battery with an AGM. See:
https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...s-ctek-229005/

Good luck!

Stuart

 

We use a standard mains extension cable. The business end and the CTEK both live in the boot and, if you route the cable in the lower corner of the boot, you can easily lock the boot without damaging the cable. We use the remove +ve terminal in the boot provided by Jaguar so you don't have to remove any of the boot lining.

Richard

 

Christmas lights are outside in deplorable weather in billions of homes. They use mains and last for many years.

 

Last year I replaced the circuit breaker panel in the house (read that the original one was a fire hazard), and thought I’d be more safety conscious and use an AFGF (combined arc and ground fault) breaker for the outside outlets. Every time it rained, the Christmas lights would trip the breaker. Taped all the plug connections, but still tripped it when it rained. Finally replaced the AFGF breaker with a regular one, and put several standalone GF breakers on the Christmas light runs. Never tripped any of them on subsequent rainfalls.
So, just saying that running main power outside can sometimes trip house breakers in wet conditions. I’d rather run the low voltage maintainer wire outside, and keep the actual maintainer sheltered indoors. Plus, I’d really hate to catch a mains power cord in the snowblower!

 

Well, yeah, running 12VDC outside is a much better choice.
Grab any AC cord, cut the ends off, and attach them inline with the 12V wires. AC cords are marked Hot and Neutral with ridges along the Neutral insulation. That'd be for the DC negative side. Of course, I'm not sure about Brit stuff.

 

Hi @adamszeman .
I do have the same config as yours when in the countryside.
And as we do have an electric car that require to be plugged if parked to maintain the battery, I let it plugged outside.
And in fact there's no risk at all as... the trunk seal allows for an extension cord to fo through with the car fully closed.
I have the Ctek plug on the trunk carpet walls and so I just plug the Ctek that stays in my trunk permanently, and plug it to the garden extension cord whenever I need to charge.

 

I am in the UK and have had my XK for over 10 years.
I use it 2 to 3 times a week mostly for a 12 mile journey each time and then back again.
Its parked on my drive.
I never have had any power issues and I have just left it for 3 weeks as I was on holiday.
No issues when starting on my return. I have left it for 5 weeks before.
Battery is now around 4 years old

If I feel the battery needs a top up I do put a charger on it for a few hours but that is quite rare

if you need to give yourself peace of mind then put a new battery on for around £85

 

Play the BMW game and permanently mount the charger in the car. Install a mains receptacle behind the rear wheel well.

But I sit firmly in the camp with @Woo5ie . With a proper battery and car maintenance, there should be no issue with not using the maintainer.

 

There's dozens of subjects about battery drains here.
I for example, just bought a new top quality battery... Yet the drain is still there with around 0,2V lost every day.. (from 12.85V fully charged plugged battery to 12,48V 2 days later).

Until I find a friend that's free to check each and every fuse in the car while checking the Amperage in the trunk at same time,I had to install a battery cutt-off switch.
And we are more than a few with that same trouble... Denying what we are living won't help us.
Now if you have a tip on where precisely we should check to find the drain, let us know.

 

Guy, there's one way to try to find the drain. It's checking the Amperage in the trunk while someone else unplugged each fuse one after the other in the 3 fuse boxes.
Haven't done it yet as it's time consuming for 2 people and requires to be parked inside...But once found, if ever, not even sure we would be able to solve the problem..

We are A LOT to have drains in ou XKs worldwide... that's obviously a construction defect from jaguar...There's no coincidence.

 

I've used an Ultimate Speed (Lidl) charger for some years to keep my S-Type and now my XK batteries fresh. The charging unit is rated IP54 which means rainproof. My charger has been rained on for many years without ill effect.

 

The first thing to do is a simple check on the quiescent current drain which you can do on your own. You can use a simple multimeter to measure the current but you need to set it up so that the car is able to go into full sleep mode. I thought my car was suffering from a current drain but once the meter was set up I could see a couple of amps for a few minutes, which then dropped to one amp and then went down in steps over the next few minutes to 20mA as the various system shut down. As the final figure is within the 30 mA Jaguar spec, I had to look elsewhere for the issue.

You need to take care not to overload the multimeter as you need a low current setting to get an accurate reading so set up a cable which bypasses the meter which you can then disconnect when you are sure the vehicle is starting its shut down procedure.

Richard

 

LOL, Sure there is…. OR, a bunch of cheap asses not just pulling the trigger and replacing a battery when it needs replacing. I have 5 JLR products in my carriage house and I don’t have these experiences. Perhaps all the other vehicles were engineered uniquely from mine

Cheers All.

 

Thats a good idea thanks so much. With me driving the car 3 times a week do you think it's necessary for it to be on trickle charger or is its nice just in case?

 

It depends how far you are driving on each trip. Assume that it takes 10 miles of motoring to replace the electrical energy removed from the battery by simply starting the car. If your drive each time is, on average, at least 10 miles before you stop the engine then I would not bother with the mains charging. If your trips, on average, are shorter than this then I would think about putting the battery on one overnight charge with an intelligent charger like the Ctek about once a month.

I would only bother with a permanent charger connected if the car was not being used at all for at least a month unless it were being stored in a garage with mains power and leaving it connected was simply achieved.

Richard

 

Depends on how long the drives are. If 5 mins then possibly yes but if 20 mins or more then probably not if your battery is OK.
As I previously said I don’t and I never had any issues .
The guys over the pond seem to have more battery related issues than the Uk but that could be my perception.
Their normal weekly usage may be different, different batteries, extremes of temp etc.

Battery issues on the UK forum aren’t mentioned nearly as much.
If the battery does get a bit low due to lack of use it doesn’t appear to give a complete non start .
You may get a couple of spurious faults on the dash which quickly disappear. It’s normally the starting point if this is the case.
The most common suggestion on here is check the battery . You will get used to it being mentioned.

check out the UK version of this Forum. Same address but leave the S off the end.

Enjoy the car as everybody seems to . They are great cars unlikely ever to be repeated