CTEK charger through a ciggy socket?

No

Robin Miller

Garbage, you would have to ask yourself why you would want to an not directly connect a cable to the AGM battery. Why the extra investment and complexity?

Hi Garbage

don't know anything about the ctek charger

as above the cig lighter will probably not handle charge current

John R's point above about complexity is certainly valid

alternator will respond to load - be it the vehicle battery or the inverter and its connected load and "think" it is connected to a larger battery - just like a dual battery setup after the cranking battery has charged sufficiently

now to the point - charging your battery with and inverter and a 240 volt multi stage charger will certainly give better charge and battery life than the alternator will ever give - however with an agm the gain will probably not be worth the effort

Standard alternators fitted to vehicles have very poor control circuitry and are designed to a price not a purpose - it would relatively easy for this to be changed at manufacture but batteries are cheap and are someone else's problem - the owners - they invariably don't charge fully or overcharge on long distance drives - both cause batteries to fail prematurely - batteries in controlled charging situations can have very long lives -much much longer than in typical automotive applications

Some campervan owners are now fitting systems with 12/24 input through an inverter and quality multistage chargers as an alternative to fitting high output marine alternators and high cost controllers - they of course have bigger investments in battery banks and most likely flooded cells rather than agms - they can also have very high current demands hence the need for high efficiency current replacement - still others are fitting multiple solar panels and smart controllers - still others are fitting onans - some are doing it all

maybe solar might be a better alternative for you

You are onto something but is it worth the effort for a single agm - probably not

Hope this helps

Garbage,
I guess you've gathered that your inverter and Ctek won't do the job you'd like it to do.

Simple maths will say that a 7amp charger will take over 6 hours to put say 42Ah into a 65Ah battery. With losses, the figure is greater.

Your alternator, if wired up correctly, will push 15-20 amps into that 65Ah battery.

Your CTek charger can provide the icing on the cake when you're back in 240volts, to keep your battery fully charged.