I'm new at hobby grade electric, so this may be stupid. I've read around and it says not to deep cycle nimh. I have a 3000mah venom and a pirhana charger. I charge it at 3A, it usually cuts off at 1:10 with total capacity of around 2700. Is this normal or do I need to cycle it. I knew nothing about the charge forming until its to late now. I have about 20 charges on it now. When exactly should I quit running my truck? What exactly is considered as deep cycling? I can't afford a discharger, so can anyone possibly give a diagram of homemade discharger? Sorry for all the questions! Oh and my car is the rustler xl5, if that matters. Thanks in advance.

That sounds pretty normal to charge a 3000 and have the display read 2700.

Two things to check are the capacity setting to make sure it is more than 2700 and the trickle setting can be 0, 100 or 200 , but should be set to 200 ma and allowed to trickle after the peak charge for at least 4 hrs. This will balance the cells if they are out of balance.

The truck should be brought in or stopped at the first notice of slowing down.

A discharger can be a simple 12 volt headlight or tail light with the red and black wires hooked to it.

thanks, on the light do i just let it burn till it goes out. thanks for reply

Here's a pic of my string of bulbs I put together with wire leads to plug into batteries. There's no low voltage cut-off and when the bulbs first start to dim (same as truck starting to slow) it should be unplugged. Dischargeing isn't recommended or nessecary because it can hurt the battery.

i have two 1500 nicd dtx batts would it still need to come off at first sight of dim? thanks

Yes, if you watch it you'll notice a very gradual dim throught the whole discharge and then at end it will "dump" as soon as you notice the "dump" is time to pull it off.

Kinda like this graph shows the voltage falling off.

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=7071116

one more thing, i am charging my venom, its set to 200 trickle. it finished fast charge and now the numbers are not moving anymore. are they supposed to keep going up as it trickles or does it stay the same and just get a little extra power. when it stopped it was at 2572mah trickled now for about 30 min. thanks for replies

No, the display will stay the same. 200 ma pretty much gets dissepated as heat anyways and is designed to bring any low cells to full mark so they are all matched and full.

Ok. thanks