NiMh hybrid battery cell reconditioning?

[Crash Machine]

I just got my hands on another Honda Civic/Insight battery pack. Also a Toyota hybrid battery pack. I have purchased the icharger 208b for the purpose of reconditioning these cells. I know several members have been working on these batteries so maybe I can get a little advice on the best procedures.
What amperage should I charge/discharge these cells? The icharger can charge/discharge at 20 amps is that too much? Do I simply set the charger, connect the charge leads and wait till they are done? It says 1-27 cells so if I should be able to charge 4 6s strings in series right?
These cells will be offered for sale when I have reconditioned them. All my findings will be posted on this thread and only the best cells with verified IR and SD rates will be sold.
As always thank you for any info. If I have overlooked any threads pertaining to this subject I apologize. Thanks again.

 

[parabellum]

The best is doing it one by one, so you could match them at the end. There will probably be few damaged (or just not so good) cells, they should not be in the string of good ones. Few slow full charge-discharge cycle are what I usually use to wake up NiCd or NiMh.

Notice the Bold text :wink:

 

[Crash Machine]

The best is doing it one by one, so you could match them at the end. There will probably be few damaged (or just not so good) cells, they should not be in the string of good ones. Few slow full charge-discharge cycle are what I usually use to wake up NiCd or NiMh.

Notice the Bold text :wink:

Thanks for the info.

So I have opened the Honda Civic battery.
I am running the initial forming charge on auto.
Cell # 1 initial voltage was 4.72 volts
Internal Resistance: 207 Milliohms
Seems on auto it charges at about 2.5 amps. The battery seems slightly warm to the touch.
Next I am planning on running 6 charge/discharge cycles. I will most likely do them at 5 amp charge and discharge just to be safe. Can I do it faster safely? What is the best procedure for finding self discharge rate?

 

[Crash Machine]

Here's some pics of the batteries.

 

[parabellum]

What cells and configuration use Toyota, already opened it?

 

[Crash Machine]

Just opened the Toyota battery and looked around. 38 NiMh cells many of them reading above 6v and some even read 7.2v. That's as far as I got last night with that.
Ran the first forming charge last night on the Honda battery.
Initial charge ran at 2.5 amps until the voltage reached 8.88v. The charge ran 5000 mAh and automatically cutout because I forgot to turn the Ah limit off. Oops.
Anyways it took 1 hr 57 min. for the this phase then the charger switch to forming charge at .65 amps C/10 for another 1658 mAh. 1hr 27 minutes in this phase.
After work today, 16 hrs. later the cells read 8.28v and the internal resistance was 30 milliohms.
Does this sound about right to anyone?
When I get 6 or 7 cells conditioned I may try and run my bike after all.
I am now running 6 charge and discharge cycles. I set the end voltage to 5.46 or .91 per cell. We will see what happens..
The icharger will only discharge at 4 amps so far am I missing something?

Wow this is such a learning process.

 

[Crash Machine]

Cell conditioning update

Ok guys been real busy but the cell conditioning is going slowly but progress continues..
The internal discharge of the icharger 208b is way too slow. 22 hours to run the forming charge and six charge/discharge cycles on one stick.
So I have been playing with the regenerative discharge feature. I had a couple of Izip batteries layin around. By running them parallel 12v 20Ah I have been able to discharge at the full 20 amps but I have been keeping it to 15 amps thats alot to feed back to the little sla's.
So I called my battery guy and he has got all these Porsche batteries layin around 12v 105Ah, all good. Seems Porsche has an indicator when it goes clear they just replace them. But being modest I only got one. I called him today and am getting three more. Run them 24v 210 Ah. Then I was going to set the 450 watt power supply set at 25 volts to the batteries. Am I right in thinking this will keep the batteries at about half charge while I run my cycles?
With one of these batteries I was able to run 10amp charge and 15 amp discharge rates on one cell. DO NOT charge/discharge any faster per 6s stick. At 15amp charge and 20 amp discharge and a 5 minute wait time between cycles they started to make the most alarming noise. Like tiny puffing sounds, must be the gases venting.
So the first few cells have reached their week time to check for self discharge. Cell one took 1.078 ah to recharge from the resting voltage of 8.23 volts to 9.6 volt fully charged voltage. Does this sound right?
What I am doing now is running 4 sticks (24s) at a time. Did the first forming charge and after sitting all night they all read 8.02v. Seems to me I could run four at a time? Internal resistance and self discharge will tell if they are good cells in the end right?
Actually ran into my first bad cell. It won't even take a forming charge. Must be self discharging more than the .65 amp forming charge can put out.
This week I am gonna run these on my bike. Can't wait. Gonna run 8 sticks or 48s. Should put me close to the 40mph range but I am sure the X5 will drain them quick.
Thinkin about gettin the Thunder Power 802cd charger. Dual ports 400 watts a piece with a 10 amp internal discharge. This would allow me to do 8 sticks at a time. Sounds like a good charger. We'll see. Anyways thanks guys. I will keep you posted.