BMW OEM Can Bus Battery Charger

SteveM

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Good evening gents,
I’ve just bought a new Shido lithium battery for the old ‘11 GSA and am wondering if anyone knows whether the OEM BMW charger is compatible with it. I’m told that its critical that your charger must never go above 15v when charging lithium batteries in order not to damage them and don’t know if this charger is able do this. I am assuming that the onboard regulator/rectifier does not exceed the 15v limit too.
PS. I can see that it says “12v=1A” but don’t know if it goes above this if the battery is low for example.
 

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From what I know about Optimate chargers, they do supply different versions for LiPo and the charge that is required is different to a normal lead acid or AGM battery. If this charger is designed for charging those types of batteries which I guess it is, I would think it would not be suitable for Lithium. If it was me I would go for a LiPo specific Optimate.
 
Can you out a tester on it to see what the output is when it's connected to a normal type of battery. I might be talking bollocks here,
You might then be able to tell if it gives a higher voltage when it's turned on or just running.
I have one of these chargers that I've never even used. Could try it later if I remember.
 
Lithium batteries do not want a Smart charger, since the smart charger cycles the battery with short burst of higher than 15V pulses.

I suspect this charger to not be a smart-charger.
To make sure, I would try to connect the charger to a regular battery, and using a voltmeter, I would check that the charger provided a 100% steady voltage that would slowly rise during the charging cycle, not at any point rising above 14,5-ish voltage.

I'm almost sure this old BMW charger may be used.
 


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