[XB GS 351 Coupe]

Originally Posted by Franco Cozzo

Its the 'float' part of the cycle with these smart chargers where the voltage is elevated, where its just maintaining the voltage at a slightly elevated point, doing this over a long period of time is what causes issues with lead acid batteries where its sitting there at 13.5V or there abouts basically just cancelling out its self discharge.

With my cars I just charge them up every now and again and then remove the charger after its sat overnight and charged up fully.

While its a $250 'premium extreme duty' battery and given this thread and everyone's experiences as of recently, I'm hesitant to recommend Century anymore or call their products 'premium'.

Its still a lead acid battery at the end of the day and plays by the same rules as the rest of the lead acid batteries.

Maybe the Century batteries are just more sensitive to this? Or maybe they've just turned to **** for some reason.

Given you drive your cars regularly I doubt its causing the problems with the Century batteries in your specific case but if you had a garage queen sitting there for months on end on float then I'd start pointing fingers.

I will keep this in mind, the battery that has failed has been driven regularly, several 300-600km trips as well as regular 50-100km trips, shortest trip I would do is 50km as we live regional and driving to the closest shop is about 50-60km return, driving to work is 60km return.

If I am using the car for a few days I obviously do not bother with the charger, if I am leaving it parked for over a week I will connect it to the charger which is wall mounted in my garage.

I might do as you recommend and just charge it up every few weeks if the car is parked up. I will monitor this more closely. In saying this I have changed none of my habits since about 1996 (when I started using float chargers due to having multiple vehicles/classic cars/ road bikes/dirt bikes/ride on mowers), and I have seriously never ever had an issue with batteries, quite the opposite actually I have been getting exceptional use out of them is I feel something has changed with these batteries.