Battery Problems
 

Hi this is my first post
I just bought a Tamiya Blazing Star Wednesday from Model Flight Adelaide it included a Futaba controller Traxxas 1500 NICD Battery and a Stadium CB146 Charger for $249. The day after I bought a Traxxas 2700 NIMH Battery and I relized the charger only said Nicd Charging so I was going to swap and get one that does both the guy said it would do both I wasnt 100% sure if he was right but I used my charger, now today the two batteries last about 2-3 minutes I read that NICD need to be discharged to 5.4 volts so that might be the problem with that battery ,but the NIMH Battery don't need to be discharged I think.
I throught the battery might be stuffing up from the charger not being the correct type am I right should I go back and say you owe me a new battery becauce you told me to use this charger and it is stuffing up the battery
what do you think? I've charged the batteries about 10-15 times

How long did you charge the packs for?

Around 20 minutes

Take em back to the shop and tell em they don't last. Let them determine what to do, it is ultimatly their descision anyway.

20mins is about right for the NICD, the NIMH will take about 30 to 40 or 45 mins depending on how much it has been discharged.

Well the guys at your LHS are complete idiots! that charger cannot charge NIMH batteries what so ever,in fact that charger wrecks your batteries because its timed i have one of these and i got battery voltages of up to 17.50! now that is just goin way over

big call duratrax when he hasnt even mentioned the charger.

if its the charger I think it is (i shop at the same store and know the guys who run it) then it can do NIMH. But untill he says what the charger is, you shouldnt be speculating.

its a Stadium CB146 Charger

Im not familiar with the charger, give them a call and explain what is going on, they should be able to help you out.

Are the packs warm to touch??? when charged???

Charge leads will charge NIMH, its pulse chargers that shouldn't be used on them.

Do you run the car until the car no longer moves?, or do you stop when you notice a drop off in power?

To be sure take the Charger, and batts on to the shop where you bought the stuff from and ask them to take the stuff for a day and see if they can get both packs to charge properly...

If they say know well then you have a problem.

Most the time I stop the car when it gets slow is this the right way? I hear you should put light globes on the battery with a 20 amp load and get the battery down to 5.4 volts once in awhile.

globes wont turn off when they battery gets to 5.4 volt without use of a relay, or you disconnceting it when measuring the voltage with a multimeter.

Being a shitty traxxas pack, and god know's how old it actually is, I wouldn't expect it to perform incredibly well... but. It's definately preferred having a charge that suits nimh cells. Being a very low grade pack, the internal resistance is going to be pretty damn high. This increases the chance of falsepeak dramatically and I would be suprised if you could charge the pack fully without use of a long lockout feature to get over the preliminary voltage changes. This would be just about impossible on a nicd charger. I would think you're charger has false peaked.

I can only guess it'd charge at 3 - 3.5amps as well, so 20 minutes definately isn't long enough if you ran it till it was slowing down.

If you are looking for a better charger, I have a Graupner Ultramat 25 for sale and it plugs into a cigarette lighter... and in adelaide too :sweat:

Tim

Are you using the charger that has the 3 led lights in a row on top of it and the charger is shaped like a grey box?

This is the charger

Its 10 years old..

no way in hell it'll charge nimhs

10 years old is that why I can't find any info on the web

I'm going to the shop today and sort this out what brand battery should I get and how much are they?

Guessing by the car, i assume you will only be running around at home and in the street ect?

For that kind of thing, any NICD or NIMH Stick pack will do just fine, and are usually from about $25 up to $60 depending on the capacity. Highest redily available capacity at the moment is 3300, 3600's are around but you might find it hard to get stick packs of those at the moment as they're relitively new.

I would reccomend a different charger however, the charger Tim mentioned before goes for about $150 at model flight (from memory), but contact him because his is forsale and works well. That charger will work fine for your needs, and would even do OK if you were racing also.

If you're interesting in racing, have a look at the SDMCC website, it has all the info you need to get started when the meetings are etc, and of course feel free to ask questions here either via posts in the forums, feel free to PM me if you have any questions. Many of the other South Aussies are always willing to help as well, im sure they wont mind getting a PM to help out a newcomer to the sport.

Oops, should say the SDMCC website is www.sdmcc.asn.au

Well I went there today and spoke to Chris and he said that charger does not charge NIMH Batteries so he gave me a new one plus I swapped the charger for an other battery at no extra cost ,so I'm happy now.
Thanks guys for all your help

Glad to hear it got sorted out OK.

They are good blokes down at model flight :nod:

These chargers aren't that old... came out in 2000 I think.
Originally sold as Arlec, later changed to Stadium.

Stadium CB146 (aka Arlec CB146) is the DC-only little brother to the famous AC/DC "brick" CB167.

Both are for nicad only, they are Delta-Peak.
Do not use them for NiMH, they'll overcharge hydrides.


I have several of the Arlecs in both flavours and they work
faultlessly with nicads. They don't false peak and never overcharge.

he have a Graupner UltraMat now :)

Chargers Nimh no problem and has long lockout feature.