(ET) BB600 status and some failures.

[Christopher Zach <cz alembic crystel com>]

So spring is finally here and I'm starting to put my E20 and E15 back 
into "Spring" mode. The E15 had a rough winter battery-wise: I changed 
out the capacitor on the charger to get a bit more voltage, and didn't 
realize the timer was broken so the batteries were badly over-charged.

As in battery pack was hot, several batteries were melted and when I 
tried to add water it went right through the cells. Not good. I'm still 
sorting that out, but it looks like I lost 8-10 batteries out of 30. 
Note to self, need better NiCD charger.

In other news I had about 7 bb600 battery cells that had at least one 
bolt broken off in the top. So I took a look at them today. By grinding 
the bolt flush with the post and using a 10/32 tap and drill set I was 
able to get four of the cells drilled, the old bolt drilled out, and new 
threads tapped. Of the other three one had a drill bit in it already, 
and I broke two bits trying to drill out the remaining two. So now I 
need to drill through drill bits. Not fun.

OTOH the rest of the batteries are fine. I think I'm going to leave the 
top charge at 1.5vpc, I'm finding on lithiums that once you pass the 
bulk charge region there is little benefit in going for that last 10%. 
Might be the same with NiCDs.

Anyone else still using the bb600's? If so in what?