488 488 Battery

Do you keep the battery on a tender?

 

Moved to appropriate forum section.

Kind regards,

Nuno.

 

was tender on?how long did it sit

 

Had the original battery three years (12/16 to February). Traveled overseas with the tender plugged in and came home to a dead battery. Decided to buy a Optima Yellow top. It shows up in two days but amazingly, the original battery came back totally to life. After several weeks, my wife said to either return it or install it. Given that my son has a Spider that is a month older than my GTB and his battery totally died, I decided to install it. No big deal - about two hours, a little heavy to lift with the fingers, and a whole bunch of screws, cables, etc., but intuitive. Unless you are a serious racer, the Braille battery is nice but not worth the extra cost. You wouldn't feel the weight reduction accelerating or corning. There appears to be a Gravity brand that is about the same weight but a lot less cost.

 

Damn bro who wears the pants in the house?

 

I feel your pain. My ‘17 488 Spider died 10 months into ownership. Always on the tender while not driving the car. FLL fought for a replacement battery for free (Ferrari policy is not to replace if car is not driven at least 2,000 miles/year). Less than a year later the new one died but didn’t need to be replaced.

Sold the car soon afterwards. My next F car car will have an Interstate or equivalent battery rather than the POS Ferrari branded batterry.

 

hope you get it resolved soon

 

Rafael: Here is my input, since you are asking.

I have zero tolerance for dead batteries. Zero. Not an option. Don't want it to even be a remote possibility. When I decided to get a Ferrari and started reading this forum from top to bottom, I was very concerned about the many dead battery stories.

I had read all of RayJohn's posts about the Braille i48cs and told myself that when I find my car, I will get that battery. I wanted to be able to count on my car starting every time and I didn't want to have to ever plug it in. I didn't care about the weight savings or the cost. Just wanted the best possible reliability.

To date, the longest I have gone without driving the car is 18 days. No tender. It started immediately.

Just for my own amusement, I have been frequently checking the voltage with my multimeter. Always sits around 13.29 volts. After 18 days it was 13.27 volts. Today 13.30 volts. I won't check much anymore.

I have thanked Ray for his advice and I am very pleased with the results. I know the AntiGravity is less money and I'm sure it is a great battery. You should definitely consider that option. I got the Braille because Ray had real world experience with it and he had done a lot of homework.

Keep us posted.

 

Antigravity is doing a 15% off deal now, I just ordered a 60ah battery for my speciale.

 

A buddy with a 458 spider had frequent dead batteries until they found a hot wire that was intermittently grounding and draining the battery.


Sent from my iPad using FerrariChat

 

Wow! Lucky his car didn't burn to the ground...

Sent from my SM-G930F using FerrariChat.com mobile app

 

Im a dealer for AntiGravity and have no problem helping you guys out. Shoot a pm. They have a cool autostart feature so the battery will never die, ever. Good peace of mind.

 

Cool. Sent you a PM

 

I have the 60aH Antigravity battery in my 458. It also has the Bluetooth monitoring system. Car has been sitting for almost 3 weeks as I am performing maintenance , installing headers / exhaust and Novitec springs. Battery voltage 13.26 V without the charger. Also purchased the Ctek lithium charger and then the adapter plug (Ebay) so it plugs into the factory battery charger slot

 

My vote goes to the Braille i48CS. I ran it in both my 458 and 488 and had great success with it. The design of the Braille batteries are simple, straightforward and robust.

I have no personal experience with the Antigravity batteries, so I can't really comment there. Braille is used by many high end racing teams. Gary at Braille is also very responsible and knowledgable when it comes to their products, so that helps a lot if you run into questions, etc.

Ray

 

I’m not sure whether the official Ferrari tender has this option, but other Cteks have a “recondition” mode. Dealer said my battery tested poorly the last time I visited for service. I passed on the replacement and ran the reconditioning program on the Ctek. Haven’t had any issues and it’s been months.