Just got a new 2019 ZO6...took me a while to get the infotainment settings up and ran down the battery. How to jump start it from another car?

 

How long is "a while"? My C7 battery goes down fast if the car isn't running and I am listening to the stereo. My C5 was the same way.

 

If you don't need her for a day I would just plug a battery tender in the slot in the trunk and let it charge that way .

 

Probably 20 minutes or so...and I had the media going at the same time. Had similar happen with my C6...should have known better. Anyway....I see on a youtube from a dealer how to jump start it. He used some kind of hand held starter but we have a newer Chevy trunk and thought about using that method...whatta ya think?

 

What is a battery tender?

 

I figured it out...thanks for your help !!

 

Best not to use a battery tender on a deeply discharged battery. I"m not sure how badly run down yours is. A charger should be used in this case. A tender is only meant for maintaining a charge or charging when the battery is still capable of starting the vehicle.

 

Best NOT to jump start your battery, connect it to a battery charger. As stated above, a tender is for keeping a battery charged, not to charge a dead battery.

 

A Tender may take a while with the limited current but can charge a battery, just not totally dead. Mine can anyway. It's a Battery Tender Plus.

If it's less than 3 volts it won't:
5 WORKING WITH A DEAD BATTERY OR A BATTERY WITH A VERY LOW VOLTAGE:If you try to charge a dead battery having a voltage below 3 Volts, the Battery Tender® Plus charger will not start. An internal safety circuit prevents the charger from generating any output voltage unless it senses at least 3 Volts at the charger output. In this situation, the red light will continue to flash, indicating that a charge has not been initiated.

TIME REQUIRED TO CHARGE A BATTERY:The Battery Tender® Plus charges at a rate of 1.25 Amps, or 1.25 Amp-Hours per hour. Therefore, a fully discharged 15 Amp-Hour battery will take approximately 10 hours to recharge to 80% capacity.

 

So the stock battery is a 550 CCA amps ... 10 hours to charge a 15 amp battery ... would take a week to charge even just a weak battery

Tenders are not battery chargers they are maintainers , charging enough to just start the car places undue stress on the alternator .. which by the way is not designed to constantly charge a weak battery
As stated above , use a real charger to bring the battery back up to 12.9 volts... don't jump start it and depend on the alternator or tender ..
Dave

 

Take a 70 amp hour for a car battery and a 1.25 amp charge rate. 70amp-hours/1.25hours = 56 hours or 2.3 days. Not a week. Any it's probably not going to take a full 70 amp hours. So 1 week? Probably not. In a pinch I would use my Battery Tender Plus if I didn't need the car for a couple days. Would I use a rather use charger if I had one handy? Yep.

 

Zjoe6 is correct. The Battery Tender Plus, 1.25 amp, will indeed recharge a dead battery as long as the voltage is not below the stated minimum. And it does take several days. I know because I've done it. My preferred method is to use my standard battery charger to bring the battery up and then connect the battery tender to finish the job.

In addition to my Battery Tender Plus, which I have mounted in my single car garage, I have one of these mounted to wall of my main garage. It can recharge a dead battery fairly quickly and then goes into maintain mode.

 

I didn't get a battery "tender"....now I understand the lingo. With the all knowing husband (this is Vette #5) he straightened me out on what is what. We have a charger coming tomorrow that will do the trick. Great idea to have one around anyway. Will get the "juice" level in the battery checked out at the dealer. I suppose it could be close to having not much remaining so should be able to get a new one gratis from dealer. Stuff happens...thanks so much for your reply! Sally

 

I don't believe anyone said you couldn't use a tender to charge a dead battery, we said a tender isn't made for or intended for charging a dead battery. Just like you could cut your grass with hedge trimmers, but of course a lawn mower is better.

I've seen many alternators blown as a result of trying to charge dead batteries over my years owning/operating auto parts stores. Again, alternators are made to keep batteries charged, not to charge dead batteries.

 

^^^
Good to hear (Sallys post). I think any car enthusiast should have a dedicated charger. It will be used many times over your lifetime and helps out friends and neighbours that are in need.

Zjoe. Does your tender have a setting for AGM? I lot of folks including me have replaced with AGM and this type of discharged battery requires a different charging algorithm. Only asking to draw awareness to the subject for others buying tenders.

My older battery tender I use for my motorcycle doesn't.

 

Agree.

I was only supporting Zjoe6's statement that it could be done based on my experience.

--KLG--

 

I'm a bit surprised that you ran it down with 20 minutes of use.

 

I am not going to argue with you because you obviously are not taking into account the increased resistance that the tender will see as the battery charge increases ... save me the time to explain and just google it ..a tender will NEVER be enough to bring a dead battery back up to full charge , maybe enough to start the car ...
you do what I want and believe what you want but as the above post mentions there are plenty of folks that think as you do and have fried thier alternators in doing so ....
Dave

 

Zjoe6 understands it properly. Battery "resistance" doesn't go up as it charges, it WILL develop higher internal resistance with age or damage limiting its ability to do its job causing a greater voltage drop under high current demand. Ctek is probably the most popular brand of battery maintainer and it is what you get (with a GM label) if you order the factory option maintainer. Ctek refers to their device as a charger/maintainer because it does both. Charging for the 3300 series is at a 3.2 AH rate until the battery approaches full charge, other models have different maximum charge rates. Like most modern charger/maintainers it is a constant current source over most of the charge cycle and will increase/decrease applied voltage as necessary to maintain the desired constant current charge rate and this is NOT the same as battery series resistance.

As Zjoe6 properly noted, the measure of battery capacity is it amp hour rating and NOT the CCA which is a short term measure of what it can source to start a car. When recharging you are bringing the battery back up to its rated AH capacity and because the process is less than 100 percent efficient you will be supplying more total power than was drawn from the battery HOWEVER if you have drained a 70AH battery down to effectively 0 AH capacity nothing is going to fix it because you have killed it. A 70AH battery discharged to a 20AH state of charge probably isn't going to start a cold engine but a 3.2AH constant current charging source will bring it back up to full charge in 24 hours (note again that the charge process isn't 100% efficient and as it approaches full charge the charging rate will tail off to protect against shortening battery life). By the way, a 70AH battery doesn't mean you can draw 70 amps continuously for one hour before full discharge, the AH rating is at a slower rate of discharge and trying to discharge it at a 70 amp rate will result in an exhausted battery in well under 60 minutes (internal cell resistance and the ability for the chemical reaction to occur at this sustained rate are the limiting factors.)

A battery that won't start a car isn't "dead", it just been discharged past the point where it can no longer source sufficient current at the required voltage to supply the heavy demand of the starter along with the lesser necessary starting demands (ECM, electronic injector activation, etc.). If the battery is truly dead, then the biggest charger in the world isn't going to resuscitate it and trying to charge a severely discharged battery at a sustained high rate is as bad as pulling the charge level down so far in the first place. And very importantly, AGM batteries like that in our C7 are maintenance free but they can vent gas and will do so under extreme conditions such as with a very heavy sustained charge current. One reason for the greater expense of the AGM battery is there is a little chemical factory in the "cap area" (and do NOT remove those caps) designed to convert hydrogen gas that would normally be vented back to its starting elements but if hydrogen is produced too quickly the system cannot keep up and will vent the excess pressure. Be sure when replacing these batteries that the vent line is installed, don't forget to grab the vent line elbow and plug from your old battery because most new ones don't even include the plug anymore and the vent elbow is somewhat vehicle specific.

 

I agree with NSCS.

However, perhaps a point that Dcasole was making is that a Battery Tender Plus, rated at 1.25 amps, does not constantly charge at that rate. Meaning the charge time calculation is not as simple as dividing the battery's amp-hour rating by the BTP's maximum charge rate. Because, as the battery's charge increases, the BTP's charge rate reduces.

I think we can agree that using a BTP to charge a dead battery (as long as the dead battery's voltage is above the BTP's minimum voltage requirement) is not the ideal method, but, it could be done.

--KLG--