Quote:
Originally Posted by turbotalon1g
How did you charge your other one?
Do you need a special charger?
|
To revive the drained battery, I hooked it up to a basic 1.5 amp or 2 amp trickle charger with "intelligent" 6v and 12v modes. When that charger got it to 12 volts, I then used the Ballistic balance charger and set it to 2 amps in normal "Charge" mode which brought it to nearly full charge-- I believe 13.6 or so volts with full charge being 14.4 volts on this battery. At that point, I used the Ballistic balance charger in "Balance Charge" mode to bring all cells to full and even charge.
I didn't research enough and went with the $110 Ballistic branded charger (
http://www.ballisticparts.com/produc...roducts_id=430) but I've since learned it's nearly identical to an iMax B6 balance charger (one example here
http://www.amazon.com/ORIGINAL-Charg.../dp/B00HED90RU) which is in the $30 range. The chargers look obviously identical (and my Ballistic branded charger even says "iMax B6" when it starts up), but I'm not 100% sure the cheaper one comes with the exactly right connection to balance charge Ballistic batteries. I've seen some versions of the iMax B6 which come with several connections of which I assume one could work, I've also seen some cheap cable sets on the intarwebz which should work, or you could find the right connector at a hobby store since the charger is often used for RC planes, as I understand it.
All in all, a basic trickle charger with float mode should work fine. I actually have three chargers, just because-- a regular, cheap Schumacher trickle charger, a Battery Tender Lithium Junior Charger (
http://www.amazon.com/Battery-Tender.../dp/B00N5UBQHS), and the Ballistic charger I mentioned.