An observation about charging the battery pack on the GT.....

[Mark ( ohio )]

2 things..... since I have nothing to compare this to... I have to ask...

1) I believe the manual states when the pack is fully charged the color will change..... Mine is charging now and the lite is bright green... do yours dim when the pack is fully charged?? About how long should this take??

2) The pack is noisy when its charging... is this normal?? My explorer battery packs didn't make any noise at all...

Mark ( ohio )

 

[deepdiger60]

Your right Mark iam charging my GT pack now when i plugged it in the green LED light was bright green after about 1 hour it has dimmed a lot as far as i know its fully charged now the only other thing i notice is if i leave it over night the battery pack is very warm the next day so i don't charge it anymore over night ,as far as making noise i never heard anything unusual Once i had to send a machine in for repair with a battery pack the tech told me he had to clean the metal tabs on the pack with a eraser they get dirty and dont charge right . To bad Minelab didn't make a indicator telling you it is fully charged . Jim

 

[matthias]

My battery pack makes buzzing noise when charging. Its done this since day one so I figured it was normal. I am going to try to use a small light bulb to drain my battery 100% so I can give it a real full charge. I charge it overnight and still only get maybe 4 hours from it. I have never noticed the green charge light change at all. HH. Matt

 

[cubfan64]

My battery pack makes buzzing noise when charging. Its done this since day one so I figured it was normal. I am going to try to use a small light bulb to drain my battery 100% so I can give it a real full charge. I charge it overnight and still only get maybe 4 hours from it. I have never noticed the green charge light change at all. HH. Matt

My experiences with both the buzzing sound and the light never changing are identical to yours Matt - I haven't paid close attention to how long I can hunt with a single charge, but my hunch is it's in the 4-6 hour range.

 

[deepdiger60]

Here is what Minelab says about charging the battery below, the green light is not very noticeable in change unless you know about it . 4 to 6 hours hunting seems a bit quick i can get a full day detecting before recharging . Jim

Using your NiMH Chargers
Plug the charger into the socket on the rechargeable NiMH battery pack, and plug the charger into
the power source and then switch the power source on. The car charger has a red light that
indicates that it has power. A green light will appear on the battery pack during charging.
A completely flat battery will take approximately 12-14 hours to fully charge. The green light on the
battery pack will fade/dim once it is charged fully. A fully charged NiMH pack will give between
15 and 20 hours detecting time, depending on the number of targets found and the level of
threshold used.

 

[Mark ( ohio )]

now.. I'll watch the light on the pack to see if it does indeed dimm in a few more hrs..

Thanks again men.

Mark ( ohio )

 

[Mark ( ohio )]

n/t

 

[Tin Fin]

I don't hear the buzzing, but that could be due to the ringing in my ears. I will have to ask my GF if she hears anything when I charge it up.

I've changed to using LiPo's, and LOVE that I am over 25 hours on one charge using the 3 cell battery and still going strong on it (1350 mAh battery pack). If I get 5 more hours out of this one charge, I will be thrilled about that.

But, I did notice that when I first started using the ML battery pack, I wasn't getting a good amount of time on the thing. With use, meaning charge, detect, charge, detect, I started getting more time out of the batteries. I think this is due to them needing to be used some before they reach their peak potential, which is not abnormal for some batteries, NiMH being one of those. I noticed the same thing with the Excal batteries initially. Now I get a very long days hunt out of a battery pack, often more than a days hunt before needing recharging. I don't know how new your batteries are, or if they were in good use or sat on the shelf for a while, but see if they extend the time you get out of them in the next few weeks.

 

[Critterhunter]

Yes, the more charging/discharging the better they will get. Even better if you run the pack all the way dead via a light bulb (car tail light or something). Just don't let it sit for days drained dead as that can reverse the polarity of cells. When the bulb goes out let it set for an hour or so to make sure all cells are completely dead.

I'm not very familiar with the Minelab stock charger as I used my Accucel to charge (via the main battery leads that connect to the machine when installed, as you can't charge with other chargers through the charge port due to a circuit in there), and later switched to lipos. However, I can tell you this...If you hook up a volt meter to the MAIN battery leads (the two big ones) you can watch the voltage of the pack as it charges on the stock charger. Normal little dips in voltage are natural due to the charging process, but if you come back a few hours later and the voltage is the same or has dropped from what it was, then that indicates the pack is full. The normal charging process will have little lower voltage dips in the road (MV threshold techicly refered to), but on the whole it will continue to rise over an hour or two. However, after say two hours if the voltage is the same or lower then that indicates the pack has reached it's peak.

 

[imalookin2]

Both of my battery lights do not go out, they dim a little but not much. Your battery is normal. The manual states it dims but it is minimal. Just charge it overnight before your hunt. It will last all day.

 

[Critterhunter]

Also, I forget but the wall transformer for the GT reads either 50 or 100ma (look on it and see). The stock pack is 1000ma, so just divide that by the output of the wall transformer and you'll know what the max hours are needed to charge a completely dead pack. If you do drain a pack completely dead via a car tail light bulb or something then figure on adding another 2 to 4 hours or so to the total charge time. Like, if the wall transformer says 100ma then that's ten hours, but I'd let it go for 12 or maybe 14 hours. Reason being that the charging process isn't super efficient, so in reality it takes longer to fully charge the pack then the math says.