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Battery Conditioner
Installation
By Adrian Mugridge

What with the stereo, alarm / immobiliser and maybe a tracker as well, the drain on the Esprit’s battery takes it’s toll and you can easily have a flat battery within a week or so, especially in the winter time. So, I bought myself a little battery conditioner to keep the battery topped up when not in use.

This one is made by Draper, and you can buy them from Halfords for £20. At first it was ideal as they are intended to be left connected to the battery for as long as you like with the battery still connected to the car. But, then you have to open the boot, connect the crocodile clips and it soon becomes a bit of a chore. So, I came up with the idea of having it connected via the water drain hole :

Time 1-2 hrs

 

You will need the following parts:

Battery Master ( about £20 )
Suitable connectors ( about £3 )

You will need the following tools:

spanner to undo the battery terminals
wire cutters
soldering iron and solder
insulating tape

Fitting Guide

All you need is a suitable pair of connectors, like these, which I bought from Maplin for about £3.00.

  

So, cut the Battery Master’s lead in half, about 1.5 meters from the crocodile clips should be fine and connect the pair of connectors to either end of the cut lead by twisting the red to the red and black to the black wires together, then solder for good measure and finally use a bit of electrical tape to make sure the bare and soldered joints don’t touch.

Then simply cut off the Battery Master’s crocodile clips, bare about 3 cm of wire, unscrew the battery terminals and wrap the bare ends of wire around the terminals and screw them back up :

Now drop the lead connected to the car’s battery down the water drain hole and after a bit of fiddling and poking it will pop out underneath the rear wheel arch :

Finally, wrap the lead round the boot catch so the lead stays in place and there you have it:

Verdict

You can now shut the boot and as there is a rubber boot seal it won’t damage the lead. Now you can connect the other connector underneath the car and keep the battery topped up without having to keep the boot open or connecting and disconnecting the crocodile clips. A nice neat install, which will keep your Esprit healthy. Well recommended.

This could also be done with the trickle charger, which is a little more advance and a little more expensive.

If you come up with a different way of installing a charger of this type, email the address below and it can be added to this page. LEW will be looking at doing something similar in the near future to it's Esprit, as we have recently done a similar thing on an Elise, which turned out really nice.

This mod was performed by Adrian Mugridge on his 1999 Sport 350

If you have any comments on this article email: admin@lotusespritworld.com

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