@VS_Pete, charging a battery is a complex bit of chemistry if one hopes to get a long service life for their batteries. Luckily smart chargers like the CTEK MXS range are more than up to the task and make charging and maintenance easier. The MXS 5.0 is more than adequate for charging batteries up to 110Ahrs and maintaining batteries up to 160Ahrs as well as being cheaper than the MXS 7. A VF commodore battery is i think 80Ahrs from memory... I have an MXS 5...
The complex part of charging batteries is that even well maintained batteries will degrade over time as that's just a fact of chemistry and no way around it.... The kicker for us suffering COVID lockdowns is that our cars weren't being used daily. And if you allow the battery's open circuit voltage to drops
below 12.3V (
2.05V/cell) then sulfation begins. And it's sulfation which will ultimately kill a battery prematurely and rather quickly if voltage is allowed to drop to single digits for extended periods of time. Sadly , there are two types of sulfation and only one type can be reversed (somewhat) by these smart chargers. The best way to avoid sulfation and premature battery death is to keep them charged
above 12.6V when in storage which is where the CTEK comes in to it's own...
If your o/c battery voltage has been at single digit volts for weeks, likely it's not in great condition and likely the smart charger anti sulfation program may not fully correct it.
As such my advice would be to read
Battery University's charging lead acid batteries to extend service life (and the few other pages on
sulfation, etc) so you understand batteries a little better. (VE aint that different from VF from what i understand
)
Then get your battery tested and if needed buy another battery.
Finally, buy a smart charger and if you have a tow bar (and don't have an electric trailer brake controller,
look here for a simple wiring solution to charging your commodore.
If the battery tests ok but it's at 80% capacity, the temptation is to keep the battery and that may be ok for a few years more. But if you start to get fault codes poping up, that's a good hint the battery is past its used by date
