New Charger and New Battery...and I'm lost?

[MtnMan210]

Bare with here comes some newbie questions........

I bought a MegaVolt 4100 Stick battery for my Slash and came to find out that my current charger wouldn't charge it. So I talked to my LHS and they recommended the Duratrax Intelli Peak Pulse Charger. It was a good price so thats my setup now. Except neither the battery or charger has any instructions.

The charger came with a very vague sheet on its use. It said I need to slow charge the new pack at 1amp or less for it's first charge. Then it goes on to say that a 100MaH should take 15hours so by that my 4100 should take 41 hours? I don't get it. So right now the new 4100 has been sitting charging for about 17 hours at .5 amps.

Then once it's been charged how do I normally charge it? The knob only say 3 amps for NimH battery's yet I charge my 1500 Nimah crawler packs at 8amps on my other charger. On this model charger it shows I can only go to 3 amps on a NimH and anything higher should be a NiCd. Any suggestions/instructions would be appreciated. I'm gonna try and get over and talk to the shop I got it from but I'm trying here first.

just as reference this is the charger I got

[FL Knifemaker]

You should be able to download the manual for that charger here:

http://www.duratrax.com/pdf/index.html

Actually........yours is here:

http://manuals.hobbico.com/dtx/dtxp4100-manual-v1_2.pdf

[EeePee]

Originally Posted by MtnMan210

yet I charge my 1500 Nimah crawler packs at 8amps on my other charger.

Don't do that. Charge those at no more than 1C, meaning 1x their capacity. Meaning 1.5 amps. They're fragile cells and you're killing them charging them at a high rate.

You should charge your 4100 at 4.1 amps, if you can. But just skimming the instruction sheet it says not to go above 3 amps. So maybe stick to 3 amps.

Slower, lower amperage charging treats the batteries much better than high amp settings.

[Stormin2u]

Originally Posted by EeePee

Slower, lower amperage charging treats the batteries much better than high amp settings.

I use the same charger and I charge my NiMHs at .05 it takes a little longer but I get really long run times from my packs. "The slower you charge them the longer the run time".

[Skeeno]

Originally Posted by Stormin2u

I use the same charger and I charge my NiMHs at .05 it takes a little longer but I get really long run times from my packs. "The slower you charge them the longer the run time".

Damn, .05? That's a long time to wait. I would only charge at .05 if I was trying to balance my cells.

If they are nimh, use the 1C guide; 1500 @ 1.5 and 4100 @ 4.1. You will not have a problem with that guideline and you should have less than an hour of charging time.