P200 Charger Missing Contact

[kem554991]

I recently purchased a pair of UHF P200's on eBay and I noticed that one of the chargers would never show that the battery was charged. The red "charging" light stays on, but it never shows "charged". When I took a closer look, I realized that one of the metal contacts (farthest left looking from the front) is missing. How big of a problem do you think this will be? Should I contact the seller for repair or replacement?

Thanks,
kem554991

[kcbooboo]

There are "rapid" chargers and there are "standard" chargers. The "rapid" charger will tell you when the charging cycle is complete; the "standard" charger will not. It's up to the user to remove the radio after a sufficiently long time.

There is probably an extra contact on the "rapid" charger to sense when the battery is fully charged. The "standard" charger doesn't have that feature, hence it only has two contacts.

Now, it could be that a previous owner stole the contact, but check the part numbers on the chargers and I'll bet they're different.

Bob M.

[kem554991]

Both chargers are identical and have two lights, a red light to indicate that the battery is charging and a green light to indicate that the battery is charged. One charger has four contacts and works perfectly. The charger on question has three contacts and a hole where the other should be.

[kcbooboo]

I've got one here with just 3 contacts and I think the single LED is bi-color. It starts out red but when charging is complete it turns green. Perhaps it's a different revision. Could be it'll deal with NiCd as well as NiMH batteries.

Bob M.

[kem554991]

That sounds about right. This one has two LEDs, but it could be a similar setup. Oh well, it seems to be charging fine.

[Will]

The P200/HT600 rapid chargers CAN overcharge your batteries.

There is a resistor change and a relocation of a capacitor that corrects this problem... Which Motorola ignored...