Battery died help.

[fay66]

I went to my garage this morning to take my Fulvia 2c Berlina to a show at Redbourne, only to find that I'd left the drivers door open! Something I've never done before.
It's 2 weeks since she was last out and the battery, a heavy duty Varta seemed to be flat, as the warning light in the trailing edge of the door would have been on.
Nothing else was on as the interior lights were switched off.
I went to charge the battery with a digital battery charger only to find that it indicated that the battery was full?
I have heard that sometimes digital battery chargers won't pull a flat battery up if it's completely discharged.
Any ideas please, as I wouldn't have expected running the battery flat would have killed it?
Brian
8227

[neil-yaj396]

You will probably need a good 'old school' larger type of battery charger to pull this one back from completely discharged Brian. How long did you leave the digital one connected? They sometimes need several minutes or up to an hour to analyze the battery level.

Batteries can be sensitive things theses days though, but hopefully it isn't dead.

[fay66]

You will probably need a good 'old school' larger type of battery charger to pull this one back from completely discharged Brian. How long did you leave the digital one connected? They sometimes need several minutes or up to an hour to analyze the battery level.

Batteries can be sensitive things theses days though, but hopefully it isn't dead.

Thank you, Neil,
I only left it on for a few minutes, so I'll try again tomorrow, a friend has loaned me an old type charger and if the digital charger doesn't work I'll try that,  I have a couple if weeks until the next time out at the Kop Hill Climb, when I'm running the hill again on the Saturday.
I hope it isn't dead, as Varta batteries aren't cheap.
Brian
8227

[fay66]

You will probably need a good 'old school' larger type of battery charger to pull this one back from completely discharged Brian. How long did you leave the digital one connected? They sometimes need several minutes or up to an hour to analyze the battery level.

Batteries can be sensitive things theses days though, but hopefully it isn't dead.

Thank you, Neil,
I only left it on for a few minutes, so I'll try again tomorrow, a friend has loaned me an old type charger and if the digital charger doesn't work I'll try that,  I have a couple if weeks until the next time out at the Kop Hill Climb, when I'm running the hill again on the Saturday.
I hope it isn't dead, as Varta batteries aren't cheap.
Brian
8227

Thankfully my friends battery charger has done the job and my battery has recovered.
Does anyone have an explanation why some digital chargers won't recover a completely flat battery?
Brian
8227

[lancialulu]

Brian

What is a digital charger?

[fay66]

Brian

What is a digital charger?

A modern solid state ?electronic charger with a digital display, as opposed to the one that I'd had for many years from Halfords, that had lot of heavy components,  and a display with needle that signified the state of charge.
Sorry but I don't know how else to describe it.

[Scott]

I suspect the modern charger has some failsafe to check there is actually a battery attached before it will operate to avoid mishaps ... and this itself relies on some minimum voltage being present. Your battery being so significantly discharged fell into this situation.

I've found this article which backs this up and may be of interest: https://www.chargingchargers.com/tutorials/battery-recognition.html