Paging - Optimate3 isti

Been loaned an Optimate3 to keep battery topped up while Brother is out of
the country for six months. No instructions, just the device.
Lights on left 'power' and 'polarity'. Understood.
Connected it all up, light on right 'charging' came on. Good.
Left it overnight now showing 'maintenance - weak' rather than
'maintenance - good'.

Can anyone with the appropriate instructions for an Optimate 3 tell me what
the difference in the battery is betweeen these two maintenance lights?

thanks

Dave

 

Someone Here wrote

It depends.

Did you do all the battery pre charge checks first and what were the
results and did you take any corrective actions? Or did you just bung
the fucking thing on the charger and then wonder what all the pretty
lights were about?

 

Instructions given were, "connect this, plug it in, it'll keep the battery
going for six months even with the alarm and stuff."
Voltmeter was showing 11.8V across the terminals and started the engine
beforehand.
Electrolyte was/is exactly on the mark. It is fitted to a machine that was
out of the showroom on 1st March.
Why buy when you are going to be out of the country for six months? All
about tax concessions and wanting a UK spec
vehicle.

The pretty lights seemed fairly straightforward.
Power
Polarity in case I connected the + and - the wrong way round.
Recovering (for a really knackered battery)
Charging which lit then went out when the maintaining light came on.

The two lights which do not appear obvious are Maintenance Good and Weak.

So on top of the original question what are the pre-charge checks?

 

Someone Here wrote

Pretty much what you did.

This is only an opinion mind but sort of sitting here and seeing the odd
question like this come up and in the end of it there be no real answer
other than "I went back and did it all again and now it works, would
anybody care to explain why?" ISTM there are some as yet undefined set
of conditions where optimates just refuse to function for a day in the
manner they are expected to.

I'd be inclined to wire up a bulb or something and drain 2 or 3 ampere
hours out of the battery tonight and leave it to rest for half an hour
and bung it back on the charger in the morning and see what happens.

There is some bad news though. A couple of times recently when this
question has been asked it has turned out to be the optimate broked
down.

 

Ah!

That's sort of why I asked in this parish. Long time lurker and all that.
Recalled something about optimate being borked but google was not my friend
in this instance.

but thanks for help

Dave

 

Thus spake steve auvache () unto the assembled multitudes:

Wot 'e said.

If I leave my Optimate connected to the bike and switched on for long
enough (days or even weeks, in winter), it will usually eventually change
from the Green "everthing's OK" to the Red "your battery's fucked" light
for no apparent reason. If I disconnect it, switch off for a while, then
reconnect and switch on, it behaves normally and displays Green. It's
almost as if the Optimate gets bored and decides just to switch to Red just
for a bit of a change, or just to be spiteful ;-)