Agreed, Chris and David. Most of my new old stock Nicads that entered service in
2004 are still good, and SAFT in Valdosta Georgia accepted a shipment of damaged cells
from me at no cost. (mainly from cell burn-through during drag racing busbar
meltdowns!)cases in point: Karmann Eclectric: Pop go the NiCads, not quite yet!
How do you protect the ET battery box from corrosion with the bb600's? I
coated mine with POR-15 and then used the HDPE battery bags, yet enough KOH spray worked
its way around the bag that the POR-15 simply turned to sheets of black goo and corrosion
began anew within three years. I'm now in the process of replacing the nicads with
salvaged EV lithium, as the bb-600s were also not up to mowing my acre of grass in a
single session.
I've put the nicads back into hibernation for an armageddon fallback.
Cheers, Jay
On 7 Feb 2022 at 22:57, Chris Zach via Elec-trak wrote:
I think I'm on 22 years with my pack now. BB600's may not have max power
density, but they are on the road to lasting "forever".
Good NiCd cells can be pretty long-lived. The chemistry is totally
different from lead's - the electrolyte is just an ion carrier - and the
wear and degradation mechanisms are slower.
Most (not all) flooded NiCds can take a surprising amount of abuse,
including moderate overcharging, though I know of someone who destroyed a
whole pack of rare Saft STM5-180s by putting them on a big charger and
forgetting about them.
Even cell reversal isn't instant battricide as it is with lead. There's no
analog to sulfation. Undercharging doesn't harm them.
They can be stored in any state of charge, and in fact with cells (not
batteries) the preferred storage method is to first run them flat. Some
even suggest storing cells (not batteries) shorted. Unlike lead, they
won't freeze until you get to Artic temperatures.
Unfortunately, they're expensive and hard to get when new, and the once-
plentiful supply of surplus BB600s seems to have dried up in the mid-2000s.
Disposal is also a problem when they finally do croak. Cadmium is nasty
stuff and illegal to landfill. Most battery recyclers won't accept flooded
NiCd batteries or cells. It's almost impossible to buy NiCd in the EU
for
this reason.
Probably the most sensible thing to do with them when they no longer work
well enough is ship them back to the factory, pay to have them rebuilt, and
put them back to work.
At >= 25 years old, my East Penn Deka Dominator gel batteries have also
held up surprisingly well, though not as well as your BB600s. In recent
years, they've finally started to decline in capacity and I've lost half of
the 24 that I bought used in 1998. Most of the remaining ones are now down
to 50-60% of rated capacity. Still, that's not bad at all for lead
batteries of that age.
David Roden - Akron, Ohio, USA
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