I’ve known the battery was going out on my Citroen DS for a while. I had to start it on the jump pack after only a few weeks of inactivity, and my Ctek charger started to indicate it could not hold a charge. The existing Citroen DS battery had served me well for about 6 years. I like to get the biggest battery I can possibly fit in the space allocated. They last longer, and work better especially on a car like the DS which can be a slow starter with its mechanical fuel pump. The current battery didn’t take up all the space in the battery mounting frame. This left room for something bigger with a bit more juice.
The current battery was a Super Charge MF50 Gold. Its dimensions were 230mm long, 170mm wide and 180mm high (not including terminals). My estimates from measuring the frame, its attachment points and the tray was that I could accept a battery that was up to 263mm long, 175mm wide and about 200mm high.
I spent a lot of time researching various battery sizes. While there is some logic to the model numbers in terms of explaining the features of the batteries, I could not decipher the various sizes. I spent a lot of time researching various battery sizes including the various recommendations from parts suppliers, manufactures and so on for the Citroen DS. In the end, the best fit I could find was the Century NS70X MF. The NS70 part of the model name refers to the size. That is 259mm long, 171mm wide and 202mm high. This increased size provided a significant capacity improvement – from 600 to 720 CCA and 60 to 85 AH.
As can be seen in the photo above, the battery fits almost perfectly in the Citroen DS battery frame. The battery was not cheap, at $280, but I expect it to last a long time. There is a very similar NS70LX MF. The L means the terminals are on the other side. You don’t want that one.
At some point I plan some upgrades to the wiring around the battery. There are all sorts of auxilliary wires coming off the positive terminal. Some of them have in-line fuses, but not all of them. I plan to fit a bused fuse box with a single wire from the positive terminal to feed the headlight relays, radio and cooling fan. I also plan to add a relay for the driving lights. Basically that would mean a fuse for radio, fan, low beam, high beam and driving lights. The fuse box would then feed the existing relays that can’t be seen to the left of the battery. While I am there I will also fit a better disconnect and Ctek charger port like I did for the 250SE.
Once I had removed the old battery I gave it a quick test on my battery tester. Only 184/600. No wonder it was struggling to start the car. In addition, it was starting to bulge on the sides.
As a comparison, the new Citroen DS battery is registering better than spec: 746/720.
I tried what the Ctek battery recondition can do to the old one. My experience is that it can bring back batteries that are a bit tired, but cannot do much with a battery as far gone as this one. That was the case again as all it was able to do was bring the CCA up to 200/600.
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