RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Hi
I have just purchased a heng long king tiger tank, although had tiger tanks for some years.
Need to know how long to charge the battery for, used to be 12 hours for the old ones.
Instructions says 2 hours for the new one, supposed to have a light on the charger but it has not.

Thanks
HarryJ

Hi Harry, My advise would be to place your Heng Long/ Taigen/ Torro Charger carefully back into its box and place it in the deepest darkest part of your cellar/basement or up in your attic and forget you ever saw it
12 hours to charge a model tank battery, you can charge a full size truck battery in 8.
Then get a Multi-type Battery programmable charger, they are not expensive and are easy to use,
If you do have a problem with it go to "U" Tube and type in the name of your charger then sit back and you will soon discover all there is to know about it,
It will be safer and quicker and add many useful hours to the life of your battery.
Shaun.

The battery should have its capacity in MaH marked on it. Also the charger should have its output on it in mA. Divide the battery capacity by the charger output rate and the answer is how long it takes for a full charge.

What type of battery is it - the usual Ni-mH?

If you have any doubts, post the information detail on here and I or someone else will work it out for you.

It is the battery and charger that came with the tank. 1700maH battery Ni-Cd and 400mA charger. If I have worked this out right it is 31/2 hours

Thanks
Harry J

Sound good to me, but I would suggest that you extend the time a little to allow for energy loss during charging. Have a read of the charging section in the Wikipedia entry here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel%E2 ... um_battery.

Is it an old tank? I did not think that they had used Ni-Cads for some time. Be prepared to replace the battery - NiCads are notorious for retaining a memory. Ideally you should not recharge a battery that is only partly discharged.

Son of a gun-ner wrote:Isn't 1700÷400=4.25 so, four and a quarter hours for full charge?

Mick.

I didn't check the maths . Reading up, you definitely need to overcharge the battery.

If you use a Programmable Charger you put in the details of the battery and the Charger tells you how long it will take and sounds an alarm when it is done.
Shaun.

Sorry charger is 500 not 400 thanks for all your help
It is a new battery and tank

I bought this charger from the Component shop, and it's very dependable. The Vapex VTE500P (and no, you can't smoke it .. ) I like the fact that it can charge even fairly beefy tank batteries, and has an LED to indicate charging status (cheap ones don't ). It also goes into trickle mode when the battery is full. Overcharging the battery with this model, therefore isn't an issue.
http://www.componentshop.co.uk/intellig ... packs.html
Oh, yes, reviews of this unit are generally favourable. A value for money product (and no, I don't have shares in the company )