Batteries Battery dead? Is there any way to bring it back?

[gr82av8]

Just bought a 3s gens ace 2200mah 60C lipo for my trex450pro v2. Got one flight out of it and plugged the balancing jack in to the balancing port on the charger backwards and ran my Thunder T6 charger on Storage as I do for other batteries. I cut it off manually when the voltage got near the proper storage voltage as I needed to go somewhere and did not want to leave it running while out of the house. I left it plugged in incorrectly overnight as I did not realize I made this careless mistake. I went to charge it this am and got the "low voltage" warning. Tested it with my voltmeter-- totally dead. I went to you tube and found some videos on how to bring back to life. Tried charging on NiMH setting to 9V to jump start it, but it did not work. The voltage only gets to about 6V, then the charger stops and shows "full". When I remove the battery from the charger and test again, it only reads about 1.7 volts, then goes to 0 after an hour or so. Also, during the NiMH charging, the charger charges for about 3 minutes (I am charging slowly) and the voltage builds, but then the voltage drops to 0 and starts recharging again, eventually getting up to 6 volts, then shutting off due to being full. It still shows the low voltage warning when I try to charge on lipo settings, of course.

I am thinking that one of the cells is bad and is not allowing the battery to charge to 9V (and then loses charge)

Can anyone verify that I just blew $37 plus shipping?

Is there any other way to bring this back to life? Thanks

 

[Admiral]

Hi Gr82av8, I have tried all of the tricks that I can Google and have never recovered one, can you test the individual cells ? getting to 6v sound like one cell is totally gone, but seeing it won't hold charge the other two don't sound as if they are much better. I think you have just blown $37.00.

 

[wolfman76]

You are doing the same thing i would and have done to the best of my knowledge that is ask i know you can do but i could be wrong. .someone else could chime in and verify not sure if having the balance port will damage a pack. ...

 

[SIXFOOTER]

I had a couple that gave the low voltage alarm and quit. Googling found a solution that worked for me. Put the charger on Pb, Lead, whatever yours says and charge it for a couple minutes, then re-try the LiPo setting. Be careful, flamage may occur.

 

[Stambo]

LIPO's are DANGEROUS!!
Trying to recover it could result in fire or explosion.
Unless you are doing this in extremely well protected area forget it.
Even if you do recover it would you trust it?
Just be glad you have not burnt your house down.
Kiss your $37.00 goodbye and be more careful in the future.

 

[Lee]

I'd say its dead.
I almost made the same mistake once, but the balance lead arced when I tried to plug it in.
Just burnt one of my balance connector terminals, but the battery was fine.

 

[xokia]

I had a couple that gave the low voltage alarm and quit. Googling found a solution that worked for me. Put the charger on Pb, Lead, whatever yours says and charge it for a couple minutes, then re-try the LiPo setting. Be careful, flamage may occur.

Yup ^^^ this is the way to do it.

The voltage only gets to about 6V, then the charger stops and shows "full". When I remove the battery from the charger and test again, it only reads about 1.7 volts, then goes to 0 after an hour or so. Also, during the NiMH charging, the charger charges for about 3 minutes (I am charging slowly) and the voltage builds, but then the voltage drops to 0 and starts recharging again, eventually getting up to 6 volts, then shutting off due to being full. It still shows the low voltage warning when I try to charge on lipo settings, of course.

You are basically trying to trick the charger. When you charge in niMh there are cut off voltages that the charger will shut off when it thinks it has filled the battery for that cell technology. NiMh is a much lower voltage per cell then LiPo. You need to keep slowly bumping the voltage up until it will charge on the lipo setting which I believe needs to be 3.3v per cell or greater.

You could likely use the Pb (lead) to get the cells up to the charge voltage you need. Start at 4S and work you way up to 6S. You should not need to charge for long periods of time at these settings maybe a couple min each. If the battery is recoverable it should recover voltage quickly. Once you get the battery up to around 3.3v per cell you can switch over to the LiPo setting and charge normally. I would try all of this outside so if it catches fire you don't burn your house down.

 

[stokke]

I had a pack with a faulty cell on it (brand new pack). The charger showed the same message as you are getting, too low voltage. I then hooked up the battery as normal with balance plug and charge plug - scrolled through the chargers menus until I came to the balance screen (shows each cells individual voltage). Left it sitting there for two nights - the charger filled up the faulty cell little by little. I did not make it charge, balance or anything - it just fixed the battery by itself.

This was on my Hyperion charger. Battery is still in service

 

[Graham Lawrie]

I did the NimH way on two of mine, never had an issue after that