A Bad Week To Be a Battery at My House - Suggestions Needed

GPS Rider

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Nov 1, 2002
Messages
92
Location
Virginia
A week ago at our holiday family gathering I was bummed to pull out my camera flash and find that I had left it in standby when I put it away several months ago, effectively keeping a constant drain on the pretty nice Duracell NiMH's I use in my strobes. I wasn't too bummed, though, because I've had them for a while and was planning to replace them with some Eneloops. Then I was surprised that after putting them in the Maha, they seem to have recovered even though they must have been pretty close to 0.0v per cell. They powered my flash just fine through the holidays. In the past when I've deep discharged my NiCad's, it pretty well wrecked them, so this is a nice change.

This evening, however, I am moderately horrified to discover that I left my nice and relatively unused 2nd gen Eneloops in my TK40 for probably over a year, subjecting them to an unintentional and super nasty torture test for sure. I don't know how I managed to do that, I'm usually very careful to unscrew the TK40's head before putting it away. :mecry:

I've got them in the Maha, but so far only one cell is showing a voltage.

Any suggestions for ways to recover these poor abused souls?
 

CuriousOne

Enlightened
Joined
Oct 14, 2012
Messages
813
You need any wall-wart DC adapter, that can output any dc voltage in range of 3-12 volts. And some resistor too, 100 ohm-500ohm will work just fine. Connect your dead battery, while observing polarity, via that resistor to dc adapter and leave on for 5-10 minutes. Then disconnect and immediately insert it into maha charger and it should now start charging properly.
 

glockboy

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Aug 27, 2003
Messages
2,341
Location
houston, tx
Just conect your dead Eneloops to a any good AA, + to +, - to - for a minute than put your Eneloops in your maha charger.
 

GPS Rider

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Nov 1, 2002
Messages
92
Location
Virginia
Thanks for your suggestions, guys. I tried the back to back with another AA battery technique that glockboy recommended and that worked. Batteries are now recharging on the Maha, so we'll see if they recover or not. Fingers crossed!
 
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