farknben

just got my first 1/18th scale(rc18t) and was wondering how/if I can charge the stock betteries(I bought an extra) with my prophet lcd charger?

I got an adaptor to fit the charger to the mini plugs.

Should I charge at like 1amp or more/less?

Do I need to be able to change volt output of the charger?

Any help would be appreciated-Thanks.

Seek and Destroy

you have to charge it on the stock 10 hour charger your first time otherwise you will get 3-4 minute run times. once the 10 hour charger is done you never have to do it again and the battery should run almost 20 min. (you only have to charge it 10 hours on the stock battery, any upgrade bat and you use your better charger). you only do it once and it is worth every 10 hours it takes (for the first charge).
edit: Welcome to RCU!!

farknben

Hello-seems like a great community

Thank you for the tip.

How about the charge rate? is 1a good?

Seek and Destroy

well the stock charger has no charge rate it's basically just a plug and charge thing. 1a works but i charge mine (stock bat) at 2a, even though some people say to charge at 1.5a but the people at hobbytown said to charge at 2a so that is what amp i charge at.

farknben

Great, thats exactly what I was looking for. Thanks

Seek and Destroy

got anymore questions cause i'll try and answer everyone. so feel free to ask me any questions. what do you mean, "do i need to be able change volt output of the charger". i didn't quite understand it.

Mr. Mugen

Well there is a charge rate on the stock charger (there is always a amp raing) I believe it is 750mah. It is a general rule of thumb to charge these batts at 10% of their cell rating. I will say 2 amp is too much unless your pack is a 2000mah or greater. If your pack is a 1100mah then charge it at no more than 1.1amp.....1400mah=1.4amp and so on. You do not have to use the 10 hour charger ever if you don't want to. No idea where that came from but cycling the pack is a good idea.

farknben

As far as cycling. how do you guys go about it? I have read(not that you can believe everything on the net) that nimh should not be cycled.

BTW where is Ishpeming?

farknben

Im not to sure myself, thought I saw something about it some where?

Seek and Destroy

i don't cycle mine, i just charge it drive it, charge it drive it and it goes on and on back til when i got it in november 2005.
ishpeming is somewhere in the usa.

Mr. Mugen

It is in the upper penninsula of michigan Cycling helps new packs gain their full potential and revives old packs.

Seek and Destroy

my packs are old and dead, mr. mugen could you tell me how to do it.

farknben

Ill be in the UP in august, you know the falls-Im not even gonna try to spell it[sm=lol.gif]

-Inverted-

Cycling your battery pack consists of charging and discharging the pack, this is similar to a system restore on your home computer. Your basicly "erasing" the old data and allowing the packs to perform as new. Remember, the age and abuse level your battery has endured has alot to do with how much you can gain with cycling a pack. Cycling is more common with Ni-Cd chemistries, but is used on Ni-Mh packs by many racers now.

Seek and Destroy

thanx inverted.

Mr. Mugen

sorry....had to run.......maybe tequemenon falls?

farknben

So is this why a long time ago when other kids at the track used x-mas lights to kill their batteries? Im talking like 18 years ago-grasshoppers[sm=redface.gif]

farknben

Yeah thats how you spell it.

Mr. Mugen

yup....thats why. Back then all there was were nicads.

-Inverted-

Back then they were getting "insane" runtime with their 2400 mah ni-cd's. Things have changed, alot.

Seek and Destroy

i wonder how short the runtimes were like 30 seconds

Mr. Mugen

I still have a bunch of em I have several ballistic packs left from the day. They are all in gwo too[8D] These packs are insane

Mr. Mugen

Man do I feel old all of a sudden. We had better run times than you may think.

farknben

If I remember right about 4-5 min. and it sucked. I think thats one reason I got out of it for so long.

Seek and Destroy

how long were they?