I got my first tiger a day ago, and everything was fine.

broke in the steel gears the lazy way after that I put some lithium grease on the gears.
it has plastic tracks and is the S&S tank

charge the battery on my piranha charger and it drove fine. for a day but only was getting maybe 15 minutes of strong running
on cement, carpet, short grass lightly covered with snow, gravel. it never got wet on the inside of the tank.

now for the issues at hand that might be causing the underlying problem.

main problem: with what I think is a fully charged battery the tank starts up and drives fine for a few minutes then everything stops working
except the sound which just sits at idle??? also smoke works.

The battery, I have not been able to charge it at 2 amps which it is rated for 2000mah, and if I charge it at say 1 amp it puts about 1000mah in the pack or less. so I've been stuck at charging at .5 amp for a very long charge.

the battery has a voltage of 7.99 with no load, is this right?

has anybody had a problem like this?

I really think its the battery, is there a proper way to discharge and charge the Ni-cd battery

thanks