I miss the old days, when I was a TV and electronics repairman. There was no such thing as numbers scratched off of parts. Companies had a much better attitude in that they wanted their products to be repairable. For one thing, it built customer confidence. If your device lasts long and you can do a couple of repairs, when it is time to replace it, many people would stick with the proven product. Of course, the opposite was true too. LOL Some products were just horrible and were in the repair shop many times. But now, so many products either have numbers scratched off, or proprietary parts, with numbers, but untraceable and worse, NO SCHEMATICS (with or without parts lists). I'm happy that I am no longer in the biz. Now, I only do repairs on my own junk... I mean.. stuff... LOL

@cambridgemart2075

5 ай бұрын

The closest we got was when the part number on a valve (tube) got burnt off from the heat.

You might call it cheap but they are anything but! Truly appalling build quality for a premium priced product.

@allthegearnoidea6752

7 ай бұрын

Annoyingly I bought one last week

Definitely taking notes! Your videos flow so well. But these types of repair prevention practices really need to stop. They are found across all industries (not sure why only certain ones like agriculture and big tech get the attention). In my main job working as a in-house engineer for a biotech company fixing all their lab equipment, >90% of the 400 pieces of equipment I am responsible for, the manufacturers refuse my access to service manuals/schematics. We've really hit a new low when manufacturers of dinky chargers like this are scratching the part #s off ICs - seriously?! Thats one of the reasons I made my channel - to help others who might be in a position like myself with limited resources. Thanks for all your content!

Glad I've avoided buying a Ctek charger, my gut instinct told me they were over priced, this vid has confirmed that! The construction is very disappointing with no or very limited ventilation which means everything is going to run hot. Those dodgy looking caps don't appear to be quality parts either. I have several Optimate chargers which are at least 25 years old, some older, and they still work perfectly. I also have a number of cheapos from Aldi and Lidl, and they work as well as the Optimates at a quarter of the price. One of the Aldi units is on maintainance charge duty for most of the year, and has been doing that for 10 years, no problem. The only thing I don't like about this and most other smart chargers is that they cut off if there is a power cut and don't automatically resume charging when power comes back on, they have to be manually reset. The old Optimates just resume charging. Just to confirm, the Ctek and other smart chargers have to see a minimum battery voltage before they will give an output, some even check the state of the battery before they will charge. I thinks that's by checking the internal battery resistance, if it's not within it's program spec then no charge. So they may not be fooled by an external power supply.

I quickly learned to use my CTEK MXS 5.0 upside down, as it cooks itself the right way up at full load, very poor thermals to put caps right next to a barely capable heat sink, they greased the 'O' rings though as mine had the same greasy stuff when I opened it.

These are not cheap! This brand is premium, at least in price. They perform well when they work, but this fault is very common with the lower end ones. I have an 8amp one, and it’s nearly 10 years old, and works great. I also have a 25amp one that is about 7 years old and powers our caravan.

In my opinion any company that removes the identification from chips should not be supported. The quality vs price of the unit is appalling.

Time to ⚰️🪦 that charger. Thanks for the video. 😎

Nice video! The problem should be with that sot-23 mosfet at one pin of the resistor.. Possibly we had the same problem: kzread.info/dash/bejne/pWWB07iYes-_mrA.html If it had good capacitors it wouldn't have failed in the first place. Plus not only they use CrapXon capacitors the have a 16V capacitor on a rail that works at 15.8V in "Desulphation" and "Recond" modes! and even 14.4V is too high for a 16V cap.

How on earth do you open the thing to get inside? One of the cables (mains power) is damaged and needs to be repaired. But I can't see any screws and it seems to be glued shut? 🤔

I just bought one of these last week as the battery on my Porsche goes flat after a couple of weeks. They do have battery protection on them and I think they do need to detect the battery. These are quite expensive units and I am concerned about the quality after watching the video.

@orion310591RS

7 ай бұрын

Well you can always get laboratory&research grade equipment, for even more $ and quality. You should check fuses for parasitic drain on your car.

@allthegearnoidea6752

7 ай бұрын

@@orion310591RS no that’s just how porches are. Lots of electrical and small batteries

5:24 - When you have exposed resistor like this, you can touch with probe, one leg, and then touch on middle of resistor, then you should be able to see roughly 1/2 of total ohms. Then you get idea what value it was.

I still don't understand why it takes so much circuitry to chagre a lead acid.

@allthegearnoidea6752

7 ай бұрын

They have a lot of reverse current protect and are suitable for long term trickle charging including gel batteries. Still protection obviously leaves something to be desired

@tonep3168

7 ай бұрын

Because it is not all it can charge…. These chargers also have battery reconditioning etc…

The problem with these things is that poor as the design is it outlasts the competition by years but as soon as the warranty is up it dies soon after. They got Failure designed into it to a fine art

Caps it's always the bl**dy caps. followed by the rest of the components :-0

Thats stupidly over complicated for a bàttery charger. A schematic? Yeah, good luck with that. Even if you had a schematic, good luck understanding the circuit. Samxon caps are one of the worst. Ive replaced samxon caps before.

@benbaselet2026

7 ай бұрын

Any old fool can cram a bunch of parts into a product. It takes a genius to get rid of most of them.

Good lord this product is badly built. And they charge a fortune for these too.