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Quote: Originally posted by brianconwy on 17/9/2013

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Any charger will charge your battery.

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'But if not the appropriate type or used appropriately for the type of battery you have it could, even quickly, wreck your battery.
Those with the now very common "sealed" maintenance free batteries need to be careful in the choice and use of chargers.'

Aren't most chargers staged, voltage controlled and automatic these days?  I wasn't suggesting using some dodgy market stall device.

We had our battery on the previous van for 4 years and on this van for three. We use the van charger most of the time but a german made Absaar charger if needed (v. rarely ).

Argos do a smart charger

    http://www.tkqlhce.com/click-1428744-10294381?url=http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Search/searchTerms/SMART+BATTERY+CHARGER.htm 

You can get them cheaper but Argos is usually easy to get to and easy to return faulty items.

Smart chagers are better. You can plug them in and just leave them for days on end if you want. With standard chargers  (Depending on the size and ampage) you will need to charge for a few hours then unplug etc.

dont use a normal charger on a leisure battery you will ruin it i found this out to my cost it's all to do cycles normal battries  and leisure battries have different ones you need a smart charger i got one from halfords for about £30.

allan-d

What is a normal charger? Which charger ruined your battery? 

Although they write deep cycle on the batteries they are not true deep cycle batteries like the ones on fork lift trucks etc.- traction batteries which are very expensive.

Leisure batteries are a variation of car batteries - they still use lead and acid.  The difference is that if it is sealed the water cannot be replaced and so it shouldn't be charged fast.

This is one of the best sites about batteries - sterling power.