I would like to share my experience with my new battery charger after half a year of extensive testing!

My old charger died, so I had to replace it with something new, because I run an engine and cab heater and I have to start the engine after the heating phase too.
The Jeep engine bay does not provide a lot of space so I still use a standard sized red top optima battery.

The optima itself provides very good starting power. Due to the the reason the optima has a very limited capacity I have to take care with consuming to much stored energy.

After doing a bit of research I found out that the optima should be recharged with 14.7V instead of 14.4V to gain a full charge.

The trouble begins...

Virtually no affordable battery charger on the market offers this feature.
Finally I found a new swedish company called C-Tek.
Finest and advanced Charger technology on the market- blablaba, you know it!

Running out of time I had to buy a charger. I bought the C-tek XS-7000 offering 7 amps of charging current.

After paying the 140€ ( around 200US$) for the unit I went home with a lightweight box of plastic.
This is what the unit looks like:



And now the big surprize happened. This small unit seemed to offer some advantages:

- It has several stages to charge the battery while maintaining the same voltage.
- The battery kept cool instead of heating up like with the old charger.
- It has a selectable constant power output of 13.6V
- it offers a battery refresh function.
- the battery can be constant on charge, because the unit has a microcontroller in it to keep the battery always in full charge condition without damaging it.

Still not convinced I pulled out my two very deep discharged 25 Ah Exide gel batteries which are mounted in my camper.
The old charger was not able to put them back to live.
The "miracle" happened- those several charging stages brought those supply batteries back to life.
I still couldn't believe it and drained them several times with a 35watt halogen bulb.
But they work now!

The unit offers other advantages:
-A quick diconnect. I installed a fixed receiver below the bumper connected with the battery and a inline 7.5A fuse.
I do not to have to open the hood anymore for recharging the battery. The receiver has a spring lid so no dirt can enter the receiver.

The quick disconnect:
You can change between clamps or into a supplied ring eyelet.



Amazingly the charger starts to charge in the last setted position.
That means you can set between charging with 14.4V or 14.7V or switch into supply mode with 13.6V or you can set it to the recondition modewhich operates time limited with 15.6V and 1.5A max current.

So many advantages- so whats wrong or bad with this unit?

I don't like three facts.

first:
-The charger does consume 30W of power during keeping the battery in a full charged state.
So I keep this charger connected onto a timer starting once a week. Which is possible due to the last setting memory.

second:
-Its a way overpriced plastic box containing a switched micro processor power supply - fabricated in China.

third:
the german manual was crap- the english translation in the internet is much better.

Knowing that my unit runs on europe 230V I had a look into the US page- similar 110V unit is named US 7002. All functions are the same.

I know that some of you live in very cold areas during the winter. And a full charged battery seems to be very important to get your trucks started.
So I came to the conclusion after testing this charger during the winter I should tell you my good experience with it.

There is also a smaller unit available with the same functions, but with a decreased output of 3.5 A. Compared with my unit it is a lot cheaper, it runs 69 € over here.
But I wanted to have a unit enabling me to recharge relatively quick. It does take its time anyway.

You can find more info on www.Ctek.com


Update:
Recharged a huge dead 120Ah military Exide gel battery with the unit without any problems.
It did took it's time(24h) until the green LED signaling the ready state lit - but it does work.

 

those are awesome battery chargers

 

Thanks for the info and for sharing your personal experience with this unit. I'll have to take a look at their site.

Are you sure about the website name? I went to C-tek.com and this is what I found:



Is the right place?

I tried ctek.com on a hunch. This seems to the correct website. No dash '-' in the name; just CTEK like it shows on the charger itself.

 

Look here -

The smartest battery chargers in the world, by CTEK Power INC.

 

That's where I went when I tried my hunch. Thanks doc.

 

Id suspect e-bay has them - I havent looked though

 

Sorry folks! I found the reason for that mistake. I confused C-tek.de and Ctek.com.
Mistake is corrected.

 

I have a Battery Tender Plus that is incredible as well! It has revived more than one "Dead" battery for me, as well as kept some stock batteries operating well past the 8 year range with no reduction in performance.

I originally got the Battery Tender for my cycle, but have used it on everything to recondition the batteries back to good health. Those type of chargers are amazing.