MG-Cars.net

Welcome to our resource for MG Car Information.

Recommendations

Parts

MG parts spares and accessories are available for MG T Series (TA, MG TB, MG TC, MG TD, MG TF), Magnette, MGA, Twin cam, MGB, MGBGT, MGC, MGC GT, MG Midget, Sprite and other MG models from British car spares company LBCarCo.

MG MGA - Battery Trickle Charger

Well, I noticed a week or two ago that the battery voltage on my MGA was down to about 12v instead of the more usual 12.5 and so I decided to check out the trickle charger.

I have had the CTEK battery maintainer for about 15 years (it was a much earlier version of the one in the picture) and it had worked well, but it had one annoying feature.

It only had two led lamps on it, one was the power-on lamp and the 2nd was the polarity warning lamp.
So, you could tell if it was on, but not if it was charging and if the battery was fully charged, which meant that the same lamps were lit up whether it was connected to the battery or not!

But it has given pretty reasonable service all being considered, in spite of the lack of information about the state of the charge.

So, when it gave up the ghost a few weeks ago, I decided to buy a new one which was easier to operate.

I went through the usual online search for the best charger and read a lot of the reviews each before deciding on one that I liked the look of.

I decided on the Ring RSC 806 6A Smart battery charger and Maintainer, it had good reviews and looked really simple to use.
It also had the same connector plug as the old CTEK charger and so I was able to plug it straight in to the charger socket.

The best things though are the single control button and the LED display.
You just use the button to run through through the options on the screen, you select the 12 volt car battery option (either the Summer 14.6v or the Winter 14.8v option. The Winter option runs at a slightly higher charge voltage)

Then the charger takes over and charges the battery until it is fully charged when a large message displays saying "FUL". Then the charger goes into maintainer mode and will automatically switch back to charging mode as and when the charge drops.

I do like the FUL indication because you can then see at a glance exactly how your battery is doing.

This charger is also marked as water resistant.

It's a pity that Ring didn't put the second letter L on the word FULL though!

Cheers
Colyn







Colyn Firth

"FUL" ..thats because the Chinese abbreviate anything English!
Gary Lock

This thread was discussed between 19/09/2024 and 21/09/2024

MG MGA index

This thread is from the archive. The Live MG MGA BBS is active now.