If you charged it with the standard battery charger that does not indicate that the battery is charged you WILL overcharge it. 2 hours is too long you definitely overcharged the battery. I use the charger that has a green indicated lite and I also put a timer on my cell phone, the battery will start to get warm about an hour into the charge. I make sure as soon as the lite turns green I take it off. The most I've ever charged the battery was an hour and half. Sorry that happened to you but someone taught me that when I first started out! Ray
I'd like for ya'll to explain something to me....because ....I don't understand... Minelab says "For its first time, Allow The Battery To Charge For At Least 16-17 Hours To Insure Its Peak Performance While Detecting"...Ok...When I first took my Excal II out of the box, that's what I did... And... usually I get 3 or 4 trips out of a full charge .. 13.9 volts or so. I was a little nervous about over charging my battery, when I first read this thread, so...I called ML and talked to the service tech (John Watson) .. I explained my concerns to him, and he told me to charge the battery pack for 12-14 hours (overnight) when it was down to around 11.4 volts or so. He agreed that the battery pack would in fact get warm during charging, but ... NOT HOT... I asked him if 12-14 hours was too much time on the charger, and he said no. That amount of time, would not affect the life of the battery pack, and it needed to be brought back up to a full charge after being discharged. (not to constantly run it on a partial charge)
So.....that is what I have been doing. But I also watched the video in the "sticky" on the main page about "Excal II sounds and settings". The guy on the video says ... 11.2 volts is a dead battery, it needs to be charged 14-17 hours to get it back to a full charge, basically the same thing that ML says.
The thing that confuses me is this...Why doesn't ML have an indicator light on their charger, to let us know when the battery is charged? .. Sometimes after a couple of hunts, my meter will read 12 volts or so, when I check the battery....Ok...Then, if I'm going for a 3 or 4 hour hunt and I want to recharge before I go, I don't want to over charge the battery and shorten the life of it, .. or burn it out with excessive charging time.
It just seems to me, the smart thing for ML to do..would be to send all of us a darned charger with an idiot light on it, and a "built - in internal cut off" so that no matter how many volts are actually left inside the battery between uses, the charger would build the battery voltage up to 14.0 volts as stated in the video, and then stabilize to keep it there, and not keep charging it more.....Like a "Battery Tender" from the auto parts store. I have one of those little chargers, and they work great for my lawn mower battery during the winter months, when it's not being used. It has a red light that tells me the battery is dead, and when the battery is fully charged, the green light comes on, and the Battery Tender stops charging and just "slowly trickles"..as needed.. to keep it at a full charge. It can sit there for months at a time and never burn the battery up!!! .. It works like a champ.
Just my 0.2
Greg
