CTEK, a manufacturer of products for the care and maintenance of vehicle batteries, held a webinar titled “Time is Money.” The session covered topics on how power management can help avoid ghost faults and improve shop efficiency, as well as the importance of battery management.
Tony Zeal, training manager at CTEK, began by sharing that years ago the battery of a vehicle was given very little attention and that it was “just a little black box under the hood used for starting the engine and storage of electrical energy.”
“Now, everything is built around the battery; it has become the very heartbeat of the modern vehicle,” Zeal said.
With over 200 electronic control units (ECUs), the modern vehicle requires a stable battery voltage in order to function correctly. This includes functions from exhaust emissions and braking to opening the doors and adjusting the speakers.
Zeal noted that the battery is the main cause of a breakdown, and according to a CTEK in-house study over 51 percent of vehicles that enter a shop have a battery that requires attention.
Shops that practice proper battery management, such as checking the battery before performing any diagnostic work, help eliminate ghost codes (codes that point to one component but arise from another). A battery in a poor state of charge can generate up to 50 percent more fault codes, Zeal noted.
This can result technicians chasing these ghost codes, spending time and money looking for fault codes that don’t exist.
Proactively testing batteries and electrical systems can not only increase shop sales but also customer safety and satisfaction by identifying potential problems before they occur, Zeal stated.
He concluded by announcing CTEK’s new workshop charger, the PRO25, which will be available later this year. The PRO25 is a 25A charger with a power supply designed for the modern needs of the automotive professional. The charger is designed to work with any 12V vehicle battery, including Lithium-Ion.
