reviving a lipo battery
 

Well I did a long duration low intensity 90km ride today. Now thats not much in terms of exercise and it was no problem. Sadly I forgot that the storage battery I've been using to run my 12v usb phone charger was only 1600mah and running the map utility most of the ride (exploring new territory) drained it to 2.6v per cell. The smart charger won't even try to charge it and the 'dumb' lipo chargers I have at least initiate but I see no real rise in cell voltages. It seems a sad end for my battery. Any chance of saving it?

Most LIPO battery chargers wont charge when the battery get that low because it can blow up. It is a safty feature. On RC batteries I have known guys to use a NIMH or NICD battery charge mode on a LIPO battery in order to just make the charger charge since there is no low voltage safty feature for those types of batteries. It is kind of dangerous to do and I wouldnt recomend trying it in your house.

The dumb chargers got them up to 10v or so... but then they started to balloon. They died. I'll have to run with my 9ah motorcycle battery until I get paid and buy a couple of 2100mah 3s batteries to link in parellel. 4200mah is more than twice what I had will easily last 8 hours... and its a lot lighter and smaller than the motorcycle battery thats filling my rear cargo box!

Yeah -once a Lipo battery drops below 3V its pretty much toast. Suggest you get your next battery pack with internal protection against over discharging.