Who's using them ?

I bought one off eBay it came with two charging points one been clips I connect direct to the battery which would prob work fine and the second was a plug that you plug in to the cig lighter socket which I'm having probs with....

Basicly when I use the lighter socket I plug it in and all my gauges light up and start beeping

Now I'm no sparky but I would have thought with it trickling power to the battery I should also be able to pick up some power at the terminals from the trickle charger once pluged in but don't seem to be getting anything...

Just wondering why it's not working as the spec c battery's are pretty lightweight so was hoping there would be some benefits to a trickle charger.

Anyone used one ??

 

https://www.altestore.com/video/solar-panel-testing-v3/
any use for testing your panel ?

 

Thanks stig

I'm getting power from the trickle charger as tested with a multimeter I just don't understand why all the defis are coming on and the power isn't going to the terminals

 

Get yourself an AA one off amazon, comes with a plug that goes into your diagnostic port to charge the battery. I've had one the last 12 months, worked great all last summer, only had to put it on the conditioner for a bit in January because the days are short, dull and cold and the car had been sitting for about 3 weeks. They are about £20 delivered.

 

Cigarette lighter socket isn't live (in Subarus) when the ignition is off so you can't feed your battery. The defis will be taking their power supply from lighter supply hence why they power on. Solution is to charge through the diagnostic port or run some wiring to the battery.

 

I had one of these last year but battery still went flat, think I binned it. Now using a ctek conditioner Steve.

 

I use a conditioner too. The tracker will drain my battery in two weeks if the car isn't used.

 

Beastie.... Thanks for your words of wisdom that's cleared that up then... I should have put up a thread prior to buying, it only cost £15 so I guess it could be worse.

The conditioner you have how is this fitted i mean is it connected direct to the battery and connect to mains, could you put up a link to the one you have I'm just wondering how it works...

 

The conditioner I have is a halfords one now discontinued. The closest they have now is this one http://www.halfords.com/workshop-too...enance-charger

The one I bought had a cable to fit directly to the battery and a plug I ran to the front grill. I now just drive in the garage take the cap off the plug and plug the maintenance charger in at the front grill.

There are quite a few similar products complete with cables for such purposes. The link I provided above I fitted to my dads motorbike in the same manner, but in this case I cut off the crocodile clips and crimped on round battery connectors and ran the cable to the side of the bike. Then again just plug it in to charge.

A lot of people recommend the ctek charger which is more expensive but comes with the cable I mentioned. http://www.ctek.com/gb/en

 

I bought the AA solar charger, mentioned above. But the OBD connection method didn't work on my MY99 STi 5.

So I rewired the car's cigarette socket to be permanently live, so I can use that for charging instead.

Just gotta wait till Xmas hols now, to see if the charger works okay or not lol...