6 Cell NiCD battery problem
 

Hello,

I have a nice (9 year old) orion matched battery pack.

There are 6 2400 cells. I built the pack from loose cells.

Anyway, I have older packs and newer packs, but this pack will not charge above 5.5V! It's useless.

My club president has a battery zapper that does some electrical voodoo to the batteries, but this didn't help either.

The packs are old, but I have older packs that are going strong.

Does anyone have some guesses about what's wrong? How do I confirm that a cell is good or bad? If I only have one or two bad cells I'll build a 4 cell pack and give it away to some pan car drivers at my track. ;)

Thanks for the help!

use a multi meter to check the cell voltage.

Also if when charging a cell gets hot faster than the others, it is most likely has high internal resistance and is bad.

Can I check the cell voltage while it is connected to other cells or do I need to strip down the pack?

And once I do properly check the voltage of an individual cell, what am I looking for if it is bad?

I know these are 1.2V cells, but I don't know what V reading tells me it's bad.

Thanks for the help guys.

can you get to the + and - of each cell?

your looking for 1 or 2 cells that are alot lower voltage than the rest.

more than likely it has taken its place in battery heaven. time to move on with a new brick. if u think ur 'older' batteries are goin strong. and they are in fact older or based off an older cell. even with new nimh, let alone lipo. u are really missing out on going 'really strong' and 'long'. i think i sound like a penis pill commercial just now.

good luck

R

Thanks guys! I found the two bad cells, strangely though, they were the 2 COOL cells in the pack. The warm cells all charged to 1.37ish volts, and the two bad ones charged to 0 volts.

So my charger thinks it's a 4 cell pack and charges it to 5.5ish volts. The two bad cells are acting as a big heavy battery bar right now. :)

I'll just donate the cells to someone at my club or save them in case I get into 1/10 pan cars. Older cells are great for testing out setups. They run just as strong as newer NiCds and NiMHs, just for a shorter time.

I do plan on getting new cells, but I'm actually changing to 1/8 electric buggies so I'll be on the LIPO bandwagon soon. My older NiMHs do just fine for my club racing right now.

Good luck with the strong and long marketing! :nod:

Simply put, batteries don't last forever. Anything more than 5 years old or so is basically a paperweight when compared to a new battery.

Don't tease some newbie by giving it to them, they may think it's good, and their car will be slow and won't run long, so they will think that's how all electrics are.

Take it to a recycling place for disposal.

Older cells are nowhere near the performance of newer stuff, they are only good for comm lathes.... lol