Gday all, I've got a little bit of a problem on my hands and can't quite get'r'sorted. Here's the deal:

Santa brought me 3 intellect 4200s and a swallow 2 advance charger for christmas. I would have thought you cycled batteries to sorta run them in right? what i did was, i plugged the swallow into the socket for power, i connected the deans connector into the plug holes, and connected the battery. i set it to work at cycle once charging at 4.2A and discharging at 0.75A. Me being stupid, i left the battery on without knowing that you had to hold start. D'oh...

at first, it said NO BATTERY when it was clearly connected and everything. I pulled it off, tried again and it worked. It charged to 8.931, it discharged (but i don't know to where. in any case, it didn't reach full discharge at 4.8 which i didn't know was the standard discharge. I have it set to 6.2 and have done cycling battery 2 and 3.). I went to christmas lunch and came back to hook it all up again. i connect the battery, set it to charge. NO BATTERY. I try again, and again, and again. keeps coming up with the same error message. I don't quite understand why. The other two seem to be fine. I've got those working perfectly and stored with full power in them on my desk.

I thought the battery may have been discharged or something, so i charged it with an annsmann 3A wall charger. charged perfectly up to around 8.9, still didn't want to charge or discharge, so i used it in my mini. it lasted 20 minutes before i cooked a 16t modified with a 16t pinion (lowest gearing possible).

It still doesn't want to admit that it has a battery connected. it's like a black sheep fucking battery. I don't get it.

Anyone help me?

no battery means the battery circuit is not complete. maybe a dodgy solder or battery bar. Either that or the swallow is shagged already. they seem to be moderately reliable though.

My Swallow 2 does a similar thing on occasions too.........and it seems to be a simple tweak of the Deans plugs that solves it........but then again , your problem may be deeper-seated than that........

A dodgy joint will also do the same.....check 'em all and re-solder them if needed..........

My 2-bobs worth

Cheers

Shane

I had an intellect 3000 stick pack with tamiya plug do that on my swallow charger, turns out the little connectors in the battery plug were about shot. battery error came up, i wiggled the plug and it worked, then didnt. Had a deans plug put on and worked fine.

hmm, you got stick packs i presume? or SxS packs?

if stick packs then theres a chance that one of the connects/tabs holding the cells together is broken and not always getting a contact.

if its a SxS pack, then i dont see how it could get a NO BATT error, must be charger or deans connector.

try resoldering a new deans connector to the charger, and if it still says error it ought to be the pack connector.

also why did you say the normal discharge voltage is 4.8v? its actually 5.4v as you should only discharge each cell down to 0.9v and 0.9 x 6 cells = 5.4v. going below 4.8v for the whole pack can sorta not be too good for it as IB cells, a certain generation, dont like fully discharging or discharging too low.

also a good idea to break in new batts is charge like this (always worked for me and i still get 5000mah+ on my old 4200 packs):

first charge: slow at 1A
discharge to 5.4v
second charge: medium at 3A
discharge to 5.4v
third charge: full 5A
discharge to 5.4v

hey man, you do know that counter on the top right corner of the screen is a counter that shows how many mah (milliamp hours) have been put into the pack?

so your counter should have atleast reached 4200, if not a lot more than 4200.

after runing the 16 turn how hot was the plug? have a look at the metal pins for marksand burning
maybe you have a bad cell?fell the pack as it is charging on the ansman charger and check if one cell gets realy hot,if this hapens you have a bad cell in your pack.
have a look at the pins in the tamiya pack they might be to loose to make contact so close the gap with a small push of a jewelers screwdrver.leaver it against the casing to close the gap a bit more look at the same spot on the other plugs to see what itn should be like or swap to deans or corally plugs to prevent this from happening in the future

the battery works fine and charges perfectly.

just not on the swallow.

i just had a fiddle with the connection. it read the battery if i manipulated it in a certain way (i'm good like that). if i let go it'd go all gay again.

then i felt the connection and it was gettin hot. doesn't happen like that with the good batteries. thanks guys.

D4, i meant the stock setting that i got the charger with was at 4.8.

i don't discharge to 0.9. i do it to 6.0v for 6cells.

Could be that the combination of plugs on the batter and the charger aren't making a good connection. I would try changing one or both of them.

If your deans arent genuine get rid of then I only use the real M'coy now.Ive used copies sometimes they work sometimes they dont.As well I charge 4200 well over 5 amp dont have a problem although interlecs have gone out of favor laterly to many problems with the batts world wide.

D4 racer ... just to clarify something you said. Getting over 5000mah into an older battery is generally not a sign of a good battery but rather one that is shagged. It generally reflects an increase in IR which means that you have to push more mah at the packs to charge them.

Cannon just referring to what yu said about mah all my batteries have taken close to 4750 to 4980 mah and all my batteries are still performing like new so is it my luck or maybe my batteries are good hahahahaha.....
Just having a joke with ya but all my batteries do this ,,,.......

Maybe you just have no idea what you are doing

Some chargers are very optimistic about what they put into the batteries. Higher IR means more mah pushed at them so maybe your cells have high IR. Whatever way you look at it IB4200 cells dont take 4900 mah from a 0.9 volt resting point. Not until they are starting to lose it. Another indication is an increasing peak voltage for the pack.

It is nothing to do with what matchers do. It is simply the way that batteries behave as they get older

Well fish good too see yu on the ball......
was just making a comment and i do use i higher than normal cut off

A joke Russell

I was just pointing out that mah taken in is not an indication of cells that are still good. It is generally the reverse