Orion Advantage Charger

[bertberr]

I recently picked up a second hand Orion Advantage Carbon charger, and while I sailed through the set up process OK, I'm having a problem with both the charge and discharge modes.

Anybody with the same or similar (non lipo) charger, can you answer me this?

In the display window, the charge current stays at 0.0A, even though I set it at 1.5A during set-up. Likewise in discharge mode, even though it was set at 1A in set-up?

The timer starts as you'd expect (no delay set) but the current stays at 0.0A...???

Any ideas? Could it be a power supply problem or is the charger f**ked?

I'm using a laptop style AC adapter with output rated at 12v / 4.16A. The battery I'm trying to discharge is a 1500mAh nimh.

[bodgit]

Try hooking it up to your real car battery see if that works. Manual says imput should be between 11-15v max no mention of amps but not sure a laptop charger would be enough.
The only times my orion never charged was when there was too little charge in the batteries being charged.

[bertberr]

Did your orion advantage always show the relevant pre-set current on the top line of the LCD display whilst charging or discharging? I'd expect it to show 1.5A there for charging and 1.0A for discharging as I selected during setup...

I'll try a car battery next, though I'll need to expose some metal on the female bullet first so I can get a croc clip on. Just for this test, do you reckon I could get away with a set of car jump leads to connect the 12V battery to the charger?

[DCM]

if you don't have the manual, click HERE

[bertberr]

i've got the manual, downloaded from orion website, but thanks anyway. have to say it's probably the worst manual i've ever read, but having said that the charger is fairly easy to navigate around. in the display snap-shots they show in the charging section, it does show a current displayed, so reckon it may be the ac adapter

[bodgit]

Got my orion charger out this morning and tried to replicate your problems.
The only thing that would cause this in my efforts were
1...the battery you are trying to charge has been discharged too far. The charger will try to trickle charge it but will not charge at the full rate you have programmed in
2 You may have set the battery data wrong
eg when I tried to charge my old 3300mah mardave battery on the program for my 4600mah battery the charger will only trickle charge them and not go to the full settings. The charger computes that the battery to be charged has too low a capacity so will only trickle it.
Other than this your only hope is to take your battery to a local club and ask someone look at your charger.
1500mah is very low capacity what are you putting it in. Could be after a 5 min race the battery has just discharged way too low.

[bertberr]

Hi, thanks for checking your charger. Battery is for an RC18, taken out of the car mid-way through a bashing session after I managed to break various front end parts including a shock body after a heavy impact. Haven't got round to replacing parts on the truck yet, so just wanted to discharge what was left in there.

By the way, at the end of a pack / truck noticeably slowing, would you expect the volts to have dropped to about 1v / cell, i.e. attaching a multimeter you'd get approx 6v reading rather than 7.2-7.7v when freshly charger? Only mine is still reading 7.66v even now???

[bertberr]

Hi, any thoughts on what the battery would show in volts after you've completed a half hour or so run with the car and / or the car is starting to slow? If it was a 6 cell 7.2v battery, would you expect to see 6v or less in this situation i.e. after a longish run? My battery is still reading 7.6v - does this imply it's still OK and has some charge in it?

When I try a test charge or discharge on my Orion Advantage Carbon charger, the display always shows 0.0A, but still 7.6v...

Couple of pics attached of the display whilst trying to charge / discharge. Does the 0.0A look normal for this charger bearing in mind during Setup I inputed 1.5A for charge and 1.0A for discharge?

Cheers

[truggy lover]

no its not normal sounds like the charger is knackered mate should show some voltage while charging and when discharging it should show how many volts it is dis-charging at

i have the same charger 2 infact willing to sell one if you are after one great chargers both mine are the carbon - lipo versions

[bertberr]

thanks for the offer, but I really want to know for sure that this one is buggered before writing it off...

you say it should show some voltage while charging / discharging, well it does - shows 7.6v or thereabouts, it just doesn't show any ampage (just 0.0A)

does yours show the preset amps when charging / discharging as well a voltage reading? cheers

[super__dan]

I concour that I think it's knackered mate, yes it should read volts and amps whilst charging and discharging. They are a great charger, I have two though annoyingly one of mine has started acting up recently, it is quite old though.

[bertberr]

OK, sounds like that's the case then... not had it that long, bought it from a guy on MSUK forum who said it was all working fine... there you are, moral of the story is don't trust any for sales off a forum, not as if you can leave feedback is it...???

Thanks for responses anyway...