Battery Charging Help

Placing the NEG lead to the chassis removes any sparking from the immediate vicinity of the battery and any hydrogen fumes hanging around the battery vents and lessens the possibility of a fire.

Connect the leads first to the appropriate terminals and then turn the charger on will prevent most sparking, unless you drop something across the terminals.

Hi Mike,

The following URL has an extremely informative write-up on batteries. See the section headed Operating Instructions.

http://www.battery-chargers.com/charging_instructions.htm

rgds

Connecting it to the chassis also prevents surge damage to ECU's so if it has a computer then stick to it.

Mike,

The comments re sparking are relevant to wet cell lead acid batteries only.

If the battery is an AGM then no "explosive" gasses are vented externally and potential of fire, etc., from sparking will not apply.

I'm not aware of any difference in location of the earthing point that would have any effect on surge damage to ECU's.
You connect the negative clamp from the charger to the battery, which in turn has a heavy duty earth lead running to the chassis, or engine block. Same result.

I just connect the positive and negative clamps to the appropriate terminals of my auxiliary battery, or primary battery, when I need to apply a charge from the Ctek.

Now, when using jumper leads, that is a different situation, due to the high current introduced and the fact that one of the batteries (in the problem vehicle) is dead flat. In this case, both vehicles have the negative lead connected to the engine block for optimum safety.

Bill.

Any decent charger design design will have a sensing circuit so it will not apply full power until it has sensed a stable battery voltage, to prevent sparking.

If you are charging a battery out of the vehicle, you can't connect the Neg. to the chassis.