Will NTN1177A gang carger charge after market batteries?

[kb8lkh]

This is a 6 bank gang charger - NTN1177A. I picked this up in a cleaning out of surplus equipment (free) from a local municipality. This is the 6 bank rapid charger.

The battery I am trying to charge is a Rayovac RAY7144 7.5 1500Mah NI-CAD. After placing the battery in the charger, The red light stays on flashing. I have not realy been able to find much information on this charger. What I have found is that this red flashing led indicatets bad battery/poor contact/incompatabalr battery.

Bad barrety is not realy an option because the battery charges just fine with my NTN1174A slow charger.

I thought I also read that the gang charger will not charge after market batteries?


Dan,
[email protected]

[Will]

Your charger should be able to charge after market and non OEM batteries.

Do you have another battery to try, and does that work?

[kb8lkh]

Currantly I have no other battery to charge. Will be getting another battery in the next month or so. Thinking about a 5500Mah LiIon I see in an ebay store. This battery has its own wall cube charger. Cost is about $54.

Dan,
[email protected]

P.S. The radios are Two VHF and UHF MT2000s.

[kb8lkh]

Hmmm... Lets suppose one of the cells is bad. The slow charger may charge fine, but the gang charge may bauk at it?

Dan,
[email protected]

[wavetar]

It's been a long time since I worked on one, and maybe Will or someone else could fill in more information, but I believe there is a resistor between two of the rear battery contacts. The value is different according to battery capacity and type, which lets the rapid charger know what it's charging. This is not used in the slow chargers. Perhaps your after market battery either doesn't have this resistor, or it has a bad connection inside.

[kb8lkh]

Still no answer as to what my problem is.

Tried a different make aftermarket battery the otherday, and still the charger registers as invalid battery type (flashing red).


Dan kb8lkh

[wavetar]

Until you try an actual Motorola battery in it, I'm going with the aftermarkets aren't built properly with the aforementioned resistor. Each pocket in the charger has it's own charging & sensing circuitry, so it's highly unlikely they are all bad. Just about the only thing in common is the power supply...which could be the issue as they were known to be flaky.