Charger for Cell Reconditioning

[Mojo53]

I'm going to try my hand at reconditioning my 2000 insight battery pack. Most of the threads recommend using the MRC Super Brain 989 charger, but these seem to have been discontinued. I can't find one for sale anywhere. What would be a good alternative to this unit?

When I do figure out which cells are bad, where can I buy replacement sticks?

Thanks

[Willie Williford]

FS 989 superbrain

Try here.
HTH
Willie

[IamIan]

Originally Posted by Mojo53

What would be a good alternative to this unit?

There are several options ... you just need a unit that can do charge and discharge of NiMH packs of 6 cells in series ... a 7.2V NiMH pack in the RC world ... The device should display real time voltage ... and count at least the ~6.5 Ah or so that come out during discharge... more features can be better but those are the basics... a good place to look is in RC hobbies stores.

The SB989 is one device that can do these things but there many many others out there.

Although it is significantly more money I like some of the features like PC logging and the DC-DC regenerative discharge feature of the PowerLab 6 and 8 if you are going to be doing lots and lots of battery testing ... but if it is a rare thing once every year or two ... you probably won't need anything that expensive.

[Hybrid-Battery-Repair]

Keep in mind that "designed for x cells" means Sub-C sized cells. Running D's on them is a much higher load, so get a correspondingly higher power unit, or run it at lower rates. For example, Every Duratrax ICE I ever purchased blew it's power transformer trying to discharge at the rated amperage. Dropping the discharge amperage by 25% made them last (from 8A to 6A for that particular unit). Even the Superbrains eventually die, and they're rated for 25 cells.

Originally Posted by IamIan

There are several options ... you just need a unit that can do charge and discharge of NiMH packs of 6 cells in series ... a 7.2V NiMH pack in the RC world ... The device should display real time voltage ... and count at least the ~6.5 Ah or so that come out during discharge... more features can be better but those are the basics... a good place to look is in RC hobbies stores.

The SB989 is one device that can do these things but there many many others out there.

Although it is significantly more money I like some of the features like PC logging and the DC-DC regenerative discharge feature of the PowerLab 6 and 8 if you are going to be doing lots and lots of battery testing ... but if it is a rare thing once every year or two ... you probably won't need anything that expensive.

[Eli]

I'll sell you replacement sticks, untested of course. Cheap.