blueboy: Glad to hear of your success with our 3000HV's.

Did your packs charge correctly with a 72 mv peak detect?

Now that you have run your packs I would reccomend you stop cycling them. Allot of racers don't realise this but cycling a pack is harder on it than racing it.

The only time I reccomend you cycle a pack is when it has been inactive for a long period of time. 1 month or so. Or if you feel your pack hasn't perform to it's potential it might be a good idea to check it.

Danny
Yeah the packs charged fine with that peak detect, and they didn't get any hotter like I thought they would. I used all three packs twice, discharging in between each run and they worked fine.
Thanks for the info on cycling as well, I think I'll be using these cells every week from now on so there's no worries about that. Might even sell my 2400s and get some more HVs!

chris@weaponr
16 x 5 is a type of charger
difficult to say how much of a drop in performance you will see from vented cells. The only way to be sure is to cycle them and see.
I discharge to 5.4V using a discharger. You can use bulbs but then you have to watch the voltage yourself and unplug the pack before it drops too low. The number of bulbs depends on what amp rate you want to discharge at. I use 20 amps. A lot of people say to use 30 as this is closer to what the cells will see in the car. I disagree with this. For a start the battery won't see a constant current in the car anyway, secondly 30 amps generates more heat. Heat is not good for cells.

dw, thank you for your guidence i think it was the heat discharging at 30amps the day was hot and the pack was discharged right after usage so i will cycle them and start discharging at 20 amps, do you know how many bulbs that is?

Ok I have a Superbrain charger. What amps and mv setting should I use for 2000ni-cads and 3000SMH? Also I am getting a new Integy charger 16x9. It discharges to .80volt cutoff. Is that ok since most people use .9?

Chris: 1157 tailight bulbs are ~ 2amps each. 10 for 20a discharge. Deans use to make a box for these bulbs that stoped the discharge at 5.4volts. I bought this in 99 though. I use turbo 35 with a 25amp rate. Considering dropping to 20 as that is closer to the stock load I am seeing. ~21 amps avg.

RC Nitro, I agree with you that stock motors will really only see as much as 20 amps on the track. However, the purpose of using the 30 amp discharge rate is to weed out the weaker cells. This is why most matchers today use this amperage to match their cells in the cell cycling process. If you have a T30/35, then you definetly want to use the 30 amp rate when cycling your cells as well. Unfortunately, cells matched and discharged at 20 amps can be determined to be underperformers at 30 amps. So some would tend to say that you may be going in the wrong direction in relation to applying helpful discharge amperages. Thanks...

Fred

Question for Danny
 

Fred
Thanks for the info. Yes I do have a turbo 35 so I can discharge at 30 or 35. Where I got my info was the promatch site on their faq on batt's. ~ 1/3 way down. It is rather long or I would past in here.FAQ

purplepro3: Sometimes a higher PV will mean that the pack has a higer IR but in the case of a higher charge rate being used this will automatically make the PV higher but will not affect the IR.

If your pack use to peak at 9.2 at a specific amp rate and it now peaks at 10.2 with the same amp rate then I would say the IR is now higher.

thanks
 

danny: thanks. so what is the PV of your packs? i am just curious and i want to know if i am within range.

BLUEBOY: As Danny mentioned the Millenium is known for false peaks but one thing i think that is the cause is that when the Millenium came out the intructions had delta peak settings for charging the Panosonic 3000s that required a much much lower delta peak setting to the Sanyo 300HVs that were not out at the that time. The 3000HV actually charge at the same rate as nicads do and many local racers charge them on older "NON-NIHM" chargers (once with not adjustable delta peak) Something we would never attempt with the flacky panosonics..

One more thing on the Millenium... A good clean power supply with 13v or more supply volts is very helpfull, a car battery is not good to use because your lucky if you get 12volts and with the 3000hv's peaking at higher volts the millenium needs good voltage.

I have been there and done that with the millenium...... the millenium pro seems to be doing much better, but a i use a T35 now

Joel
Thanks for that information about the Milennium. I have been considering a power supply like the Novak Npower or similar, but I would still have to use the car battery when I'm at a meeting because very few tracks here in UK have indoor pitting, let alone mains sockets.
I have been having some success with charging at 6 amps with a 10mv drop per cell peak, on NiCD Linear setting, as per Danny's instructions :)

I had a feeling you used a car battery. Kool :)

Listen to Danny he knows his stuff, and produces the best cells for racers..

purplepro3: My 6 cell packs peak out in the 9.6 - 9.75 range at 7 amps on my Pitbull. But it has been my experience that different chargers may read higher or lower.