Hi again colstonman:

As soon as the pack is charged and still warm, but not HOT, it's ok to fly it. And no, NiMh's are less troublesome than NiCd's, and perform better. And don't go buying any more battery packs yet ... if the charger is bad, you don't want to go wrecking anymore packs.

Well, the way I see it everything was fine, except for slow pack recharging, until the last flight before using the Piranah charger. If this info is correct, what went wrong on that flight when the motor and ESC got too touch?
Had the motor and ESC been heting up excessively prior to that flight?

Can't blame the charger, you hadn't used it yet.

Neither the ESC nor the battery would have made the motor get any hotter than usual, so I am suspicious of something going wrong with the motor during that flight. The motor drawing excessive current from the battery THROUGH the ESC would also make the ESC get hot. That could be caused by the brushes being worn to the end of their usefulness and/or the springs being heated up and detempered. Can you see a lot of sparking in the motor? Sloppy or binding or noisy bearings? I don't want to confuse this any more, but those Tamiya connectors may not be helping either ... do they look discolored or burned or melted?

It's also possible that everything was going fine till you charged the pack on the Piranah charger, but you need to be the judge of that.

Before you start changing parts, it may be time to take some measurements ... do you have a volt-ohm meter?

Does the Piranah give you an indication of the pack voltage at the BEGINNING and the END of the charge cycle, the final current put into the pack and the elapsed time it charged? This is pretty important Info. Let me know.

Chat later,

Russ