Trickle charger

[slaphead]

This will be a really daft question to most of you but as you will read, I know absoloutley nothing practical about cars at all. I recently purchased an xk8 convertible but have had the battery drain after 4 or 5 days. I have obtained a trickle charger but it mentions connecting the negative to an earth.
How do you do this? Is it the wire from the negative terminal to the car body, where the nut goes onto the inside of the boot? or can I just connect direct the terminal?

[PrideofLyons]

Hello Tooney and welcome. Just connect the charger to the battery terminals.

Incidentally, you refer to a 'trickle charger' - if it's not one of the more sophisticated battery 'conditioners' may I suggest that you'd do better by treating yourself to one? CTEK seem to be about the best but there're one or two others about, such as Optimate.

I see from your other post that the 8 is your high-days and holidays car, suggesting that it'll spend a fair bit of time standing around unused (like mine) and the XK's are notably susceptible to low battery voltage, throwing up all sorts of curious electronic faults as a result. The point about a conditioner is that you can safely leave it connected to the car, almost in perpetuity and know that you'll have the full 12 volts each time you come to use it. Good luck with it.

[slaphead]

Thanks for that Pride of Lions, I was just confused over what it said on the box. The car has just been fitted with a new battery and I was just being cautious about not doing any damage, thats put my mind at ease.