karolh

Over the years in an effort to combat the black wire disease from happening, I developed the habit of disconnecting the batteries from my radio systems incl. my Tx when not in use, and so far this has worked for me.

Since making the switch from glow to gas power I have been leaving the ignition batteries connected due to the degree of difficulty involved in getting to them, such as in-cowl installs. Is this still a worthwhile practice or has wire/insulation quality so improved that this precautionary action is no longer necessary.

Karol

Rodney

If you are using other than NiCad for batteries, you have very little risk of getting black wire disease. To the best of my knowledge (although I have heard of two exceptionsneither verified) this will only happen with NiCad and then only if using wet cells or have a sealed cell that has broken the seal at the positive end and outgassed. I'm pretty sure that there has to be Cadmium present for this to happen as it is a chemical process (the molecular structure of the wire is changed).

karolh

Rodney,

Thanks for your response but kindly enlighten me as to what is a wet cell Nicad. I use only Sanyo brand Nicad packs from Batteries America as I have found Nicads to be quite forgiving if mishandled, which I am guilty of doing on occassion, eg inadvertently leaving on the Tx or the on-board Rx battery until flat. I try to take the best possible care of my batteries so hopefully I have very little to be worried about now.

Karol

Capt Lou

Can you please explain what is "black wire disease''?

TedMo

To my knowledge I have no idea if black wire disease is present or not unless I cut the wire for some reason. It is not visible unless wire has been cut to be reattached by soldering. That then becomes a problem since a good solder joint cannot be made with black wires. However I have been able to make a good solder connection by thoroughly scrapeing the black from the wire. Although I have read that wire with it does not conduct as w ell it has not caused any problems for me.

Capt Lou

TedMo:

Thanks for the response. I have never heard of this issue but nw I will look for it whenever I have cause to solder balck wire. Thanks

iflyj3

My Feedback: (7)

For the explanation of the black wire problem go to http://www.hangtimes.com/id27.html This is Red's battery clinic.

Capt Lou

iflyj3:

Thanks for the reference, it is helpful. Is the black wire disease limited to Ni-cad packs or can it also happen to A123 battery packs?

iflyj3

My Feedback: (7)

That I do not know. I have only just started with A123's.

What I do know is I had a coax wire a few years back that was on a remote switch for an old VCR and it had the black wire disease and it was not connected to any type of battery. Some opinions are, it is the dye in the black insulation that causes it. However, if that was it it wouldn't corrode connectors. We have seen a lot of BWD but are far from determining the exact cause.

Rodney

Do not mistake simple corrosion for black wire disease. On black wire disease, the wire becomes very brittle (breaks easily) and you absolutely can not solder to it. If you can scrape the black off, it is NOT black wire disease. The black wire disease will always start at the positive terminal on a NiCad and slowly progress up the length of the wire (if you catch it early enough you can save a part of the wire) and will usually stop at the first solder connection or terminal.

Thisstrangeengine

I have seen this only after replacing old nicad packs with new ones and trying to solder the old connector to the new pack. I couldnt figure out why the wire wasnt shiny copper and I think it was only on the positive wire. I tried to cut back to good (Shiny new) copper with no luck, so just replaced the connector. At first I thought it was from fuel penetrating the plastic coating, but why only one wire?
Now I know what this was...

Gizmo-RCU

My Feedback: (27)

Black-wire can happen with conventional Auto acid based Batteries. Recently my Bobcat loader would not start and the controls and light panels were all over the place. I thought the computer may be the cause and had to have the field mechanic come by twice.
It turned out to be the neg. cable which was totally black under the covering, very brittle and stiff. Apparently it would not properly allow electrical flow and the systems would not work because the computer.
I could have bought a really nice RC plane for what repairs cost me.

richrd

Everytime ive see it the battery also had salt,, aka white cystrel on the typ. pos terminal. an come to think it was NiCAD's but NiMH are still new when talking about 10 year old batteries.[&:]. So an abuse the out gasses may start an it can not be stoped unless cut out.
Rich

Bundubasher

Switch over to LiFE PO4 batteries and you will never look back. They have much better performance and no black death problems. They are now also slightly cheaper than Nicad batteries - the cadnium in Nicad are also toxic and make disposal of it difficult.

I have switched over from nicads and Nmetal hydate batteries to LiFE PO4 batteries - also in my transmitters. Last week I accidently forgot to switch off my Spektrum 2.4 gHz TX before putting it in it's case. I discover it 32 hours later and it was still reading 9 V. I charged it up and it is back to normal.

Cheers


Bundu

Flypaper 2

When I ran a small motor shop, over a period of a yr, probably a couple of hundred lawn mowers, at least one would come up with black wire. Only fix was to replace the wire from end to end. Always a negative wire.