Adding an external charge point

Have you ever found yourself with a locked car, with a flat battery and no external locks? Well I found myself in this exact situation with my R32. 

Firstly, how do you access your locked car? In my case, I knew that once the car had power, I would be able to pop open the locks and get under the bonnet to jump start it. What you need to do in this situation, is to get access to one of the major battery positive connections, such as the Starter motor or the Alternator. 

For me, easiest point was the Alternator. Jacking up the car and removing the undertray from the engine bay gave me access to attach the battery charger to the Alternator and a good ground point on the engine block. Thankfully I was then able to unlock the car and open both the bonnet and the boot, essential if you need to get to the battery. 

Adding an external charge point is fairly generic, but the pictures I will share are specific to the MK5 R32 or other 4wd MK5 Golf models. 

The kit

The part I used was the following Ctek comfort indicator lead. If you’ve not got a Ctek charger I would highly recommend one. They can recondition your battery easily and bring many dead batteries back to life. Also, as in my case, could be used to maintain the battery if you are not using the car very often. These are the chargers recommended by manufacturers like Porsche and Ferrari. 

Amazon link to theMXS 5.0 is here.

The comfort indicator is this one from Amazon.

You can get these kits with different size eyelets to suit your application. 

Installation

Once I had got into the car again, I shifted all the stuff in my boot out of the way and got to the battery cover panel in the boot. You will need a triple square bit to undo the 12 bolts that hold the cover in place. Then remove the polystyrene packing part to access the battery. 

There is a handy grommet in the bottom of this box just in case it ever fills with water, I used this to get the charge point out under the floor. The connector is waterproof so it should be fine out there. 

As the comfort indicator has a fuse in line and eyelets, I cut the wires to get them through the hole. I then used good quality crimp connectors to join it back together inside the battery box. 

Now I can charge the car from outside. 

Very handy indeed. As a bonus, this comfort indicator version also shows you the current charge state of the battery, so you will be able to see if you need to pop it on charge easily. In fact I will be getting another one of these for the Project car in the garage. 

 

Update: Just to clarify, I would not recommend charging a completely flat battery with it in the car. There is a tiny danger of a voltage spike from the charger causing issues with the car electrics. If you get stuck, then connecting the charger/2nd battery to the alternator from underneath to open the doors is fine, but it would be best to remove the battery from the car to give it a full charge. 
Once the mod is done, you shouldn’t need to do this again as you will be able to keep the car trickle charged.