'Strikalite' : How to revive a 'dead' battery pack.

[John Candy]

IMPORTANT NOTICE : The safety aspects in carrying out the procedures outlined in this message have been called into question. Unless you understand the risks involved in the procedure and possess the necessary Personal Protection Equipment to counter those risks, YOU SHOULD NOT ATTEMPT THE PROCEDURE

See also messages on 12 volt battery safety under 'Safety Matters / Electricity'

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  'Strikalite'?         No, not an exclamation of surprise!

If you have not heard of them they are suppliers of, inter alia, batteries and chargers.
A couple of years ago (at least) I bought a 14.4V pack of 'Strikalite' batteries from Brian Jones (along with a 'Mac 5' and some other bits).

The batteries sat in a cupboard as the 'smart charger' I already had was for lithium batteries and these were NiMH.

Last August I bought from www.strikalite.co.uk a suitable charger....and that went into the cupboard with the batteries....yes, I KNOW batteries should not be left for long periods uncharged but I had a lot of other matters in hand and forgot.

A few months back, I plugged the charger in to the battery pack but nothing happened....the indicator light flashed a couple of times and went out.

I assumed it was a 'dud' charger (well, after all, it was made in China) and found that it was still within the 1 year warranty.
I e-mailed Strikalite who promptly replied asking me to send it back for testing, which I did.

I received a message a few days later saying that they could find no fault with the charger and were sending it back.

They made no charge for return postage and even included another set of leads (I had not returned the original set).

Again, no luck with charging the batteries, so I sent an email explaining and included the voltage readouts.
They replied (again the same day) explaining that the batteries has gone into deep discharge and that the 'smart charger' was not recognising the battery pack as being within the voltage range for which it had been designed (apparently a 14.4V pack needs to hold a charge of 10.8V or greater to be recognised and mine had dropped to less than 9V).

They very helpfully explained that to boost the charge to 10.8V I needed to connect the pack to a car battery.  Very wary of this, since a 70AmpHour battery without a rheostat or some other current limiting device would obviously be detrimental (to say the least) to the pack, I asked for clarification.

I was told to connect for five to ten seconds, disconnect for 5 seconds and repeat this process 4 or 5 times which should raise the charge sufficiently for the 'smart charger' to recognise the pack. They, very helpfully, added that if that did not work I should return the pack to them and they would work on it.

Now that's what I call service!

What happened, well the lot went back into the cupboard : I was far too busy ...with setting up this new G3 website apart from other matters.... to deal with it then.

Today, I thought to myself, the warmer weather may have excited the batteries, I wonder whether the charge has increased?
I plugged the charger into the pack and 'hey presto!' the charging light came on.
If you don't want to wait for warmer weather to raise the charge, then GENTLY warm them (perhaps in the airing cupboard or on a radiator) but most definitely do NOT put them in the oven!

So, there you have it, if your batteries appear dead, don't throw them out without trying these useful tips.

[keith Bristol]

We use packs of rechargable cells in the traffic industry. It is quite common for remote controls to become heavily discharged due to them being left in vans for long periods. We have used the trick of connecting another more powerful battery to 'awaken' the recahrgeable cells. It does work but we have NEVER used a car battery as the larger power sources.

[Geoff Nicholls]

I've just had a 19.2v strikalite battery pack that had the charger wouldn't recognize. Not having a care battery, I connected it to the PP3 terminals on my Maplin charger. Even though the Maplin charger thought it was already fully charged, it still boosted it sufficiently to be detected by the charger.