So I have been into rc for years now and rarely run into anything I dont know how to fix, but this has got me completely stumped. I recently bought a couple new glow igniters, I got the du bro kwik start xl, I bought two in case im out bashing and one dies.
Anyway if I use the the wall chargers they came with, they charge just fine, leave em for about 12-14 hrs and they charge right up and work great. BUT I dont want to wait 12-14 hrs for these things to charge. I have been trying to charge them with my prodigy 66 (which is an awesome charger btw) but they absolutely will not charge using it. I make sure the igniter is completely dead, does nothing when you put a plug in it. Then I plug one in, set the charger to nicd mode at 0.6a, and hit start. (they are 1300mah nicd cells) The charger starts but immediately says 1.3-1.4 volts and charges it for about 8 - 9 minutes then beeps and says its full. And of course its not full, it lights the plug up for about a minute then is dead again. Both igniters do the exact same thing, with different chargers also, and its 100% repeatable. Setting the amperage on the charger lower makes them stay charging longer of course, but does not fix the problem. I cannot figure out why this wont work...is there something obvious Im missing?

Id check your delta v and peak voltage setting then adjust both by a few hundreths

Thanks for the tip, will try and get back to this thread if it doesnt work

The only setting my charger has for nimh and nicd cells is "Sensitivity". It lets you adjust the mV per cell. I have no idea what this means, have never had to deal with this problem before lol
Its worth noting that I also have the same problem with single nimh cells as well as the nicd's. I dont have this problem with lipos or any other battery that has more than one cell. It seems to be just a problem with charging a single cell. Been scouring the internet for hours and cannot find any digestible info on this anywhere

I think you should adjust the mV to 1.41.... Delta peak is very important when charging a Ni.what other chargers do you own besides the 66?.

Just restart again, and again, and again..... until it stays on

But it is a common problem, I have it too, has something to do that single cell charging is not working right on many current chargers. I could get my hands on an old Robbe RX/TX charger with also a glow ignitor plug. That works w/o any issues.

I also have one of those cheap imax b6 things you can get on ebay. Surprisingly they work very well. I have no way to set the mV to 1.41, the lowest setting it has is 5 and it goes in increments of 5, think Im not thinking of the same thing you are

the b6 you should be able to set the correct setting ..Mv and Delta peak

It has the exact same settings. Neither one lets me set that. I have also tried starting and stopping them numerous times with no luck

You can adjust the delta peak on a imax b6.. you just have to know how..

The problem you are having is that the battery is false peaking. The way a charger works for nicad/nimh is it looks at the voltage as the cell charges, and it detects the voltage drop off at the end of the charge. Your battery doesn't have a smooth voltage track so you have to trick the charger by turning up the mV setting so the voltage fluctuations are not enough to turn off the charger.

Conversely, you could join this century and get a lipo powered glow ignitor.

I remember back in the days I had a list of different names on NiXX that I would adjust the max voltage and Mv setting to get the best charge and performance from My Nixx batteries..And I know I could adjust both on all on my so called 4 button chargers.. and even the Imax 6b both 50 watt and 80 watt chargers..And its not tricking the charger in any way!

Why does the voltage curve of the battery fluctuate enough to cause a false peak?

Noise from charger or battery itself can cause voltage drop to trigger false peak readings