I've been using a
CTEK
800 battery maintainer on the
Cayman
for the last 6 months with no issues.
This morning I hear a weird buzzing from the driveway and noticed that both the green (charged) and amber (charging) lights were both on and the unit was making the noise.
I quickly unplugged it then plugged it back in after physcally making sure the unit was OK (no heat, nothing wet around it, etc.). It came up in charging mode but I noticed the green light would now flicker every few seconds. No noise however. I don't think it did this before.
Since I didn't want to be late for work, I just left it unplugged and will play with it later.
Any thoughts on what may have gone wrong?
I don't know if that model is the exact same one as the Porsche one but the Porsche CTEK unit manual says if the green charged light and charging light blink on/off then there is a disconnect somewhere the system or the battery is sulphated (time for a new battery).
Geez, I hope not, the car is less than 7 months old. Well, I'm back home now, gonna try the charger on another car battery and make sure the lighter plug is firmly pushed in on the
Cayman
.
Stay tuned...
Thanks for the info chows, the
CTEK
unit is the same as the
Porsche
unit.
I unplugged it from the cigarette lighter and made sure all the connections were solid. Plugged the unit back it and it seems to be charging again without any flickering or funny noises.
I'll keep a close eye on it for the rest of the evening and see what happens. Hopefully it was just a flaky connection at the power outlet in the car.
That was probably it, bad connection
Your using the cigarette lighter? I never use that. Try the connection inside the little console when you open it toward the front of the open bin. You can shove the connector in pretty hard there and that outlet is always hot. In fact, when you plug it in there, without actually plugging in the battery maintainer to a plug, you can see the on light glow slightly as thats it drawing power slightly out of the battery. Then when you plug in the maintainer, it glows full.
Did I say cigarette lighter? I mean the power outlet in the passenger seat footwell. It's a bit awkward to lean in there when plugging so I'm hoping that's it.
Nice one Kor.
That one is hot too.
Sounds good.
Just got back online after a power outtage in my home. We have overhead electrical wiring and one wire on the pole had melted/corroded causing most of my block to lose power, but only on one phase of the circuit! So here I was troubleshooting my breaker box trying to figure out only some areas had lost power. It took me a while to see my neighbors wandering around like zombies on the street wondering what was going on.
Since this "meltdown" didn't happen suddenly, I'm sure it had something to do with the
CTEK
going nuts this morning.
Of course I ran right out and unplugged the unit while our local power company worked on the wiring. How would you like to explain to your service advisor how a power surge scrambled your ECU on the car?
