Mickstix

Hey again!! Well, I got this glow plugigniter with a nitro "startup" kit, and it's basically just a 1.2v battery attached to a glow ignitor, and comes with a wall charger that plugs into the tip like a glow plug would.. Well, it's goin dead on me pretty quickly, and Im wondering if the battery needs to be cycled and throughly recharged??Only problem is I dont know how to discharge it completely??(Doesnt seem healthy to just hook it up to the glowplug and leave it?) Does it make sense to cycle the battery on these things (and if yes, how do I do it?)or should I just look for a new ignitor? Thanks for any ideas or info!!

Mickstix

Ok, since you bums dontwant to tell me the answer, I had to go figured it out on my own.. hehehee.. Nah, actually all I had to do was a quick search of the"RCUniverse" forums, and Ifound what I needed.. In case anyone else is interested, I found that you DONTneed to discharge the single subc cell glow plugignitors.. Apparently, the old problem ofbatterymemory is a thing of the past with todays battery technology.. But, if after using your ignitor for a long time, you still want to discharge it, what you can do is take a light bulb from a flashlight, and insert it into the tip of the ignitor, like a glow plug would, and that'll do the trick!!Also, most of the "wall wart" chargers that come with these little ignitors are not very powerful, and take a long long time to fully charge the battery to begin with!!(Im thinkin thats probably what my issue was..)There's aformula you can use, to determine how long it "should" take, to "fully" charge your ignitor.. What ya do is, take the battery's capacity (example:1800mAh) and "multiply"that by 1.4, (not sure where they get 1.4 from, but that's the numberthey say to use??) And finally "divide"by the output (example: 100mAh)of the charger, and that should be the number of hours it'll take to fully charge your ignitor!!So, in the case of myignitor and charger, it'd be something like this:1800 x 1.4 / 100 = 25.2 (So with my 100mAh wall charger, I need to charge my 1800 mAh battery ignitor for 25.2 hours to fully charge it..) So there ya have it!!No need to discharge those ignitor batteries, unless ya really want to..

rjsdad

Thanks for the tip, I think that I need to fully discharge and recharge.

Mickstix

Dont lie, you know you just want to see if it'll light the little flashlight bulb?!?! (I think Im gonna do mine as well) hehe

rjsdad

LOL

chevyderek72

I dont think it should take 25 hours to charge. If you charge a 1200mah battery at 1.2 amps (1200mah), it should take an hour. So if it was 1200mah and charged at 100mah it should take 12 hours. But i may be wrong.

firebird78

yeah the nihm batteries are WAY better then nicd's.....you may havta drain them once or twice but after that you should be ready to rock as nihm batteries dont have memory issues.....as far as charging goes....say you have a 1200mah battery and are charging it with a 100mah charger....its gonna take 12 hrs to charge it....granted if you leave it on longer you prolly wont really damage the battery due to your basically trickle charging it, but your not gonna get anymore out of it either...

Mickstix

Yea, the 100mAh wall chargers arent gonna hurt anything if left to charge longer.. Im also not sure why they say to times the battery mAh by 1.4, before dividing it by the charger mAh output, but that's where the added "hours" of charge time come from. (ex. my 1800mAh batt / 100mAh= 18 hrs.) but with the "X" 1.4, it goes to 25.2  But again, I have no idea if it's right or wrong, that's just what the consensus was when I did my search on the subject..