Charger Questions - Getting Back Into The Hobby

[jasonnewyork]

I'm in process of rejuvenating my old R/C collection - mostly 80's Tamiya. When I put them into storage, I threw out all my batteries so need to buy new. I see N-Cd is not the battery of choice anymore. Looks like I will be buying Ni-MH instead.

Can I use a charger designed for Ni-Cd batteries to charge a Ni-MH pack? It's an older (from the 80's) 15 minute quick charger with mechanical timer and ammeter. Since my original packs were 1200-1500 mAh, will it take 30 minutes or longer to charge 3000+ mAh packs?

[Percymon]

I'm in process of rejuvenating my old R/C collection - mostly 80's Tamiya. When I put them into storage, I threw out all my batteries so need to buy new. I see N-Cd is not the battery of choice anymore. Looks like I will be buying Ni-MH instead.

Can I use a charger designed for Ni-Cd batteries to charge a Ni-MH pack? It's an older (from the 80's) 15 minute quick charger with mechanical timer and ammeter. Since my original packs were 1200-1500 mAh, will it take 30 minutes or longer to charge 3000+ mAh packs?

Your choice of battery and charger will be determined by how seriously you get the bug again - things have moved on appreciably in terms of motors, and more so batteries, so it might be wise to buy a used Ni-Cd off ebay, run your cars half a dozen times and see how much of the RC bug is still there. If you buy a bigger capacity pack, you'll have to charge for longer, so just put it back on charge a second time.

Given your username i won't recommend UK battery sellers or brands as things will be different stateside. An Ansmann vbase deluxe charger for mains charging, which has variable charge rate up to 5A, will handle NiCd, NiMH, and LiPo (although not balanced charging).

A popular charger is the Imax B6 and its clones, mainly available from HK sellers - this will do pretty much everything, includign balanced lipo charging, so its a one for all solution.

I went with the Ansmann charger purely because i won't be going lipo for some time , and i wanted a reasonable charger supplied within the UK (to avoid import taxes/VAT).

[dan12]

I'm in process of rejuvenating my old R/C collection - mostly 80's Tamiya. When I put them into storage, I threw out all my batteries so need to buy new. I see N-Cd is not the battery of choice anymore. Looks like I will be buying Ni-MH instead.

Can I use a charger designed for Ni-Cd batteries to charge a Ni-MH pack? It's an older (from the 80's) 15 minute quick charger with mechanical timer and ammeter. Since my original packs were 1200-1500 mAh, will it take 30 minutes or longer to charge 3000+ mAh packs?

That charger should be fine, i use a pro peak 2500(from the 90's) to charge 8.4v 3000 packs.

NIMH is better than NICD packs, you will also find they are alot more powerfull and cheaper then back in the 80's!

I reccomend you go for over 2500mah in light 2wd buggy's and 3000mah in 4wd buggys.

I usse a 8.4v 3000mah pack in my fighter rx buggy and she flies!

Hope this helps.

[Backlash]

Hi Jason, welcome to Tamiyaclub..

Do yourself a favor and put that old clockwork timer charger back in storage, and buy yourself a modern peak detection charger to save you overcharging those new batteries... The clockwork timers were known to jam when the chargers were new, imagine what they would be like 20-30 years on..

Cheers

[Butler]

A decent charger will get the best out of your batteries and we regularly see them breath new life into old NiCads.

A rubbish charger won't do new batteries any good at all.