Bad Battery?? question

[yellowisthefastes]

I just picked up my first car yesterday and followed all instructions and all of that. I charged both my Orion Rocket Packs on an Intellipeak Twin Pulse charger until it blinked saying they were fully charged. I ran the car for about 20 minutes, it was starting to slow down so I let it sit for a little while off. Took out the batteries and plugged them back into the charger and let them charge just until they blinked ready again. Took about an hour and twenty minutes. I looked at my batteries and if you see the pictures this is what I found on one of them. I do not know if it was melted before I took them out of the car or when it happened. For all I know it might have been like that before I put them in the car. Car ran fine the whole time. Batteries were pretty warm when I took them out. I could hold them in my hand and they were pretty warm but not too hot to hold. Anyone have any ideas? Should I take the one back? They were in an e-revo if that makes a difference, I was driving in the grass and rarely getting it going very fast, mainly just cruising around learning how to drive the thing. Thanks

 

[HeartBreak]

What amperage are you charging the packs at? Try lowering it down to about 3 amps at the most. If it's already at 3 amps, try 2 amps. It might take longer, but the packs shouldn't get near as hot.

When they get that hot, it's usually a sign of charging them too hard.

 

[yellowisthefastes]

It is set at 3.5amps. I can put it at 1 amp so I will do that. Is there any reason I can't run this battery still in my car? Should I repair the plastic?

 

[abadk9420]

Those batteries had to get pretty hot to melt the shrink wrap like that, and 3.5 amps for a 4500 mah pack should be OK, did you drive it around water because I noticed what looked like some moister on the bottom side of the battery, I would not recommend getting your batteries wet, but as long as you don't see any signs of the batteries leaking I would just watch them closely and the fact that the batteries are in a enclosed compartment may cause them to get a little hotter. If you have a temp gun you might want to see how hot they are when they are done charging and when you are done driving, you don't really want your batteries to get hotter then 130 degrees, if you want you could just use a little electrical tape on the exposed area...

 

[Lessen]

You should never charge your batteries right after you discharge them. They need to sit a little while before you put a fast charge on them again. I've been having the same type of issues with the same charger. However, I've been getting mixed results with my findings. A couple packs of mine were getting very very hot and others aren't. I chalked it up to a couple bad packs cuz the charger seems to be working fine with other packs I have.

 

[yellowisthefastes]

I did put them back on the charger shortly after they came out of the car. They did cool down for about 10 minutes but now I know I should let them sit for awhile. Lesson learned for me. I am kind of thinking about getting a better charger anyway, like you and others eluded to, it might be cheaper in the long run to buy a better unit the first time then to have to buy a second, not to mention if you loose even one pack of batteries. I am thinking I might pick up a charger that will do lipo just in case I go that direction down the road.