Charging NiMH on my vintage Novak Digi Peak Plus charger.

[Bormac]

I have a couple of Novak Digi Peak Plus chargers that Ive accumulated purely out of nostalgia's sake and also have some new old skool Sanyo Nicad's which i want to charge, store and care for in a proper manner.

Now if my memory serves me we used to store the old nicads with a resister across the battery connection to keep the batteries drained waiting for the next charge to come some time in the future. Is this correct?

I would like to get some NiMH stick packs as some of my vintage rides realy dont like the size of our modern day lipo's. My question is- Can I charge NiMH on my Novak chargers? There is an adjustable Linear and Pulse mode option aswell as Trickle too. Can anybody offer me some advise?

[THEYTOOKMYTHUMB]

To answer the question: Yes you can use it. I doubt it will recognize any sort of peak though because it doesn't recognize the battery circuitry. You will need to monitor them closely so that they don't overcharge and get too hot. It won't hurt them unless you overcharge them, but I guess that goes without saying. NIMH packs are expensive compared to lipo in my opinion. You can find lipos that fit perfectly, but you do have to get the charger which raises the overall cost so it just depends what kind of investment you want to make at the time. If you search around you can find clearance prices on some nimh packs. As far as storage, I just discharged mine completely and stored them with an open plug. They worked just fine 10 years later, but the run times sucked. Punch was actually acceptable. Hard to tell if that's because I was spoiled by better batteries or if it's because I stored them improperly. I was surprised they even worked really. Again, not recommending that storage method; just reporting my results. Good luck

[Mad Racer]

Jason.

Your Novak Digi Peak will work fine.

The differance between Ni Cad and Ni Mih is their delta value is lower. That is its thier peak voltage threashold. Ni Cad's had a higher value. That means the charger will keep charging past thier max mh input. As for Ni Mih this is lower. They don't like to be over charged at all.

Keeping this in mind the older the packs are this may be better. Charge in Linear mode only. Pulse or turbo flex is what was used on old nicad's . The principal of this was every 10 sec's or around that the charger pulsed the pack in a negative spike current. Why?? It was suppose to break up the formed up crystals on the plates that causes's a memmory effect. It did work a little. It also caused problems in false peaking.


When charging just keep a eye on the digital volt meter. As soon as it starts to drop of around .03 to .05 and pack is slightly warmer than ambient temp it should be charged. Around 9 plus volts. .

If false peaks as old packs are unstable in voltage try charging at a lower rate to get a full charge. Old Ni Cad chargers use to have a Delta lock out which locked out any delta value for 3 min or so to stop this.

Cheers.
Mad Racer.

[Bormac]

Thanks heaps Mark. You have a wealth of knowledge on this stuff. Cheers-Jason