I have some old Nicad Sanyo 2400 I game to my nephew. He just ran one and its very hot. How do Nicad Cells go bad? will they burn up? just stop working? Thinking now I need to take these back from him before he has issues with them.

How hot? In my nicd days my packs would simply not hold a charge anymore. I never had packs get hot because they were bad. They were always hot after a run though. I mean too hot to hold hot, (the result of trying to run a 12t with 1200mah SCRs). If these are packs that were sitting for a long time and this is the first time using them agian that might be a reason but I couldn't be sure. Do they get hot while you charge them or just after running?

What are you running them in??? a 2400mah anything (other than lipo) is going to get hot if your trying to run a hot modified or BL set-up. It's your nephew so I'm guessing that's not it but you never know

that's my $.02

he is running a stock xl-5 stampede. The batteries we very hot. Not to hot to hold but still very hot. They are 2400mah but only taking 1700mah in charge but still its something, and I or his parents have little money to get anything new. I already bought the pede, gave him a propeak charger and the 3 2400's. For batteries I just have one SPC so I have nothing extra to let him use.

man nicads
i remember i had some trinity 1700 sce pushed cells from trinity
i remember reading an article on the special care needed for sce cells
while i was waiting for my pack to finish charging for the 10th time that day haha

but anyways
i remember my nicad packs would always be hot after running them
like uncomfortably hot to hold

If he's bashing with it in the grass and such that puts more load on the motor increasing it's amp draw. Long story short, let them cool before you charge them and if they don't get hot, warm is fine, while you charge them they should be fine. Basically the motor is putting more load on the battery than they can really handle which creates heat, internal resistance, capacity, amp draw, blah blah blah. Any way if you can still hold it when he's done they should be fine and I personally wouldn't worry but that's me.

We had packs get so hot after a 4 min. race that the shrink wrap would split on the cells. Coolem' down and charge em' again at like 5 amps on a 1200-1400 mah pack. We beat the hell out of em' and they just came back for more.

Generally, if you can hold on to the battery for more than, say, 5 - 10 seconds, you've got nothing to worry about, as long as you let it cool before charging

I've had some nicads that I couldn't even touch (and slightly deformed the plastic) in my original Clodbuster chassis...

But that's powering two 10 turn motors