Away for a month, How to keep the car in working condition especially the battery.

[massimo23]

Hi I won't be using my Polo 6c for a month and with the winter in I know the battery won't last. What are the best options to keep the battery from discharging and dying?
what happens if I remove the battery and use a trickle charger and also should I release the handbrake? any other ideas... thanks

[RUM4MO]

If the car battery is in good condition and fully charged, it should last for at least 4 weeks and still have enough charge to start the car.

If parked on private land leaving the handbrake off is a good idea, but I'm not sure if doing that is a good idea in a public car park though it should survive okay with the handbrake left on.

[veteran]

I agree with RUM4MO. But do you realise that, provided you've 240v AC power at hand, you don't need to disconnect and remove the vehicle battery in order to charge it? With the right sort of battery charger, one that's designed for start/stop vehicle electrics, you can charge the battery with it left in situ and its terminals left undisturbed. One such charger is the CTEK CT5. I use mine on my 1.2 TSI 6C on a regular basis, especially as I don't cover substantial high annual mileages. Works a treat. Incidentally, on these 6Cs especially, there's a special 'monitoring' resistor built into the negative or 'earth' side of the battery lead, and when connecting the charger in this scenario, the negative connection from the charger should be made on the chassis side of that resistor, not right on the battery terminal itself. Just to the right of that special resistor there's a clear section of the battery's negative lead on to which you can clip the charger's negative connection. You'd connect positive to positive in the normal way. Being a CT5 model, the charge rate is comparatively slow, but when the battery reaches full charge the CT5 charger switches into a 'maintain' mode. With that, you can safely leave the charger connected, for days and weeks if necessary.

I'm assuming of course that you've AC power available wherever you leave the car overnight or when it's not used for long periods. But if you haven't, or it's otherwise not practical to deal with trailing AC mains power leads, I guess you've no option but to completely remove the battery from the vehicle and put it on a charger indoors. But be mindful that if you disconnect the vehicle battery, when you eventually put it back a number of vehicle fault conditions will get flagged up on the dashboard display. Though most of these can be cleared by just driving the car for a few hundred metres, those that relate to the windows may require a different procedure to put right. RUM4MO has aluded to this in the topic 'Changing the battery'.

[massimo23]

thank you very much for the replies. my car would be parked outside but is close to a 220v waterproof outlet. i also would prefer to keep the battery in the car so not to have any errors or problems. My car has start/stop so should I invest in the Ctek ct5 or Bosch c3 charger?

[RUM4MO]

For this use, you could buy a lesser/cheaper CTEK if they exist, which I'm sure they will - CTEK does seem to be a trustworthy manufacturer of smart chargers that are safe to be left unattended and also with the battery connected to the car.

Maybe try to work out what other use you would have for that charger before deciding which model to buy.

Edit:- probably the CTEK CT5 Start Stop Battery Charger that you should buy, the one I bought was an earlier one with AGM battery settings which suited me at the time.