To either fully or trickle charge the above car one has to expose two posts within the engine bay, as is normal. One Negative, one Positive, of course.

The Positive is relatively accessible, but the Negative is a perfect swine. A typical case of German over engineering.  Apart from the fact that the N post is several inches below multiple metal pipes which make getting even a finger on to the wretched thing virtually impossible, it is then protected by two very awkward clips, one a relatively heavy duty clip, and the other a clip that has to be released in order to release the first clip.  Neither would budge despite liberal applications of WD40.   The second clip is as fragile as a butterflies wing, and broke off with very little pressure, leaving me in a situation where charging or trickling the battery is impossible.     Don’t manufacturers ever give any thought to scenarios like this ? 

Hello Steve,

Charging batteries is done by connecting the positive lead of the charger to the positive terminal of the battery (straight from the school of the bleeding obviously!) and the negative lead of the charger to any suitable metal earthed point. No need to get at the actual negative terminal of the battery. 

Now for suitability of chargers:- For ‘modern cars’ fitted with stop/start facilities and AGM batteries, these batteries should only be charged with what could be referred to as ‘intelligent’ chargers, which charge in a programmed mode depending on the state of the battery. You should not use the old style chargers to charge AGM batteries. 

Kind regards,

Gareth. 

Hi Gareth,

it is hugely useful to be told that the negative lead of the charger can be connected to any suitable metal earthed point. Thank you for that, I should have realised that, but WTF.    So, if I were to bare the cable that passes from the hugely inaccessible Negative post into a point where it is screwed into the body work for an Earth, then that should do the job from the point of giving me a suitable Earth ?

re charging -   If I use a charger that has a trickle charge facility which detects the level of charge in the battery and then trickle charges to an appropriate level before automatically switching itself off, then that should do the job.  Am I right?   Thanks for your helpful input, mate, I owe you one !

cheers, Steve.

Hello Steve,

I’m not sure I’m understand the bit following the abbreviated swearing - incidentally, I’ve asked the question why this forum (quite rightly) blanks out offending words where written, but allows the offending words to remain in their abbreviated form! Totally illogical! 

Sounds as if you might have an ‘intelligent’  charger, but you would need to consult the manufactures to confirm or refute that. 

Kind regards,

Gareth. 

Thank you, Gareth, for the further useful advice.   Cheers, Steve.