Saber NOS 15 year old batteries - Genuine Motorola vs Axess 3rd Party

[g8tzl2004]

I have picked up a number of New Old Stock...BUT 15 year old...Saber batteries for around $1 each

I used a 6 way Impress charger. I initially charged one genuine and two 3rd party batteries

The genuine Motorola is dated 2004 and charged no problem. No need to zap the battery to get all the cells taking a charge. Charge terminated after a couple of hours. The battery seems to be working OK...the Saber has been scanning for 6 hours and the voltage is still around 7.6v. Under heavy load while TXing 5W, there is no battery alert to indicate a big voltage drop. I'm hopeful the battery will be OK....for a 16 year old battery

I also charged 2 Axess 3rd party Saber batteries dated 2005. Again, there was no need to zap the batteries to get the voltage up and the batteries charged at 8-9v for a couple of hours. After about 1.5 hours I got a flashing yellow/orange LED which indicated a warm battery...but after the batteries cooled down, the charge finished with a green LED. Both cells appeared OK with "no load" voltages of around 8v which is what you expect from a good battery. I was hopeful...BUT when I powered up the Saber...nothing. I thought it was poor battery contacts as the battery terminals were a bit more recessed than the genuine Motorola battery. But then I checked the voltage under a very small load (maybe 25mA) and both batteries only measured around 0.2v!!!! So no load = 8v, small load =0.2v. I expect old batteries to suffer from voltage drop under high load conditions...but its the first time I've seen such a big difference in batteries which seemed to charge OK for a couple of hours.

 

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

what chemistry? Model numbers?

 

[g8tzl2004]

NiCad..will need to check model number...but its the large 1800+mAH type...4 inch long type...not the small battery....[checked.. NTN4595D 432 ZUE2 1 HR CHARGE].

I went through the box and about 50% have voltage readings of around 4 - 6.5v (no load)...the rest are 0v. Only about 4 are Axess 3rd party batteries. The rest are genuine Moto. The batteries were last charged around 12 years ago according to the "Test" tags

I initially picked 3 Motorola batteries without checking the voltage and 2 are working great with my Sabers with apparent good capacity but I guess they will need to cycled 3 - 7 times to get max capacity. The other battery only has 2.8v despite zapping with 12v source.

 

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

I have had poor luck with NIMH, Maybe the NICD are more resilient. I actually was able to restore some NOS HT200 and MX300 NICD batteries. But Saber NIMH seem to get shorted, show low terminal voltage and even if you get them to charge up it happens again.

Save your NOS duds. They can be repacked as Lithium Ion as a DIY project. I have done a few.

 

[g8tzl2004]

Maybe the old Motorola NiCad batteries used "quality" cells? Newer stuff made in China probably will not last 5 years never mind 16 years

I have some 10 - 12 year old AA NiMH's made in China which act like the Axess batteries...no load voltage appears OK but as soon as you put a high load on the battery there is a significant voltage drop. However, I still use the AA batteries in my weather station "collection" which only use a few mA's so the load is very low. I have some Sanyo 600mAH AA Nicad cells which I bought used and had come from commercial cordless phones. They are about 20 years old and still have a capacity of around 400mAh under high load

 

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

Maybe the old Motorola NiCad batteries used "quality" cells? Newer stuff made in China probably will not last 5 years never mind 16 years

I have some 10 - 12 year old AA NiMH's made in China which act like the Axess batteries...no load voltage appears OK but as soon as you put a high load on the battery there is a significant voltage drop. However, I still use the AA batteries in my weather station "collection" which only use a few mA's so the load is very low. I have some Sanyo 600mAH AA Nicad cells which I bought used and had come from commercial cordless phones. They are about 20 years old and still have a capacity of around 400mAh under high load

For the NOS HT200 batteries restored. Most definitely. These were big cells and rated far more conservatively. The separator plate probably was thicker and the chemistry likely formulated for stability rather than energy density. I could be over my pay scale on that, but I was pleased to see them recover so quickly. If I recall the shelf life on those cells was 5 years. I

 

[MTS2000DES]

Motorola used to be the only radio manufacturer that made it's own Nicad (and later NiMH) cells. Battery manufacturing facility was right here in Lawrenceville, GA. During the zig zag suck up to the Chinese Zander days, the energy products plant was closed and cells sourced from China, and Japan, and all made in China by OEM third parties. Believe the plant closed in the early 00s.

The OEM Motorola cells were matched, top notch quality and known for exceptionally long service life.