New ROAR Rules

[Gorden]

what ever is decided I would like to know before the end of February As it would give us enough time to set aside some play money before out door starts up.

[Blake]

what ever is decided I would like to know before the end of February As it would give us enough time to set aside some play money before out door starts up.

I think we can all agree with that!  Personally, I'd like to see the decision made mid-February so as to allow two full months before the summer season gets up and running.  I'll be doing everything I can to make that happen.

Blake

[Shawn68z]

At to nights racing acouple of us were talking about lipo use for the summer. Here is acouple of the newer links I could find

The dimensions are:

5000
L-135MM W-47.8MM H 25.5MM

4000
L-135MM W 46.8MM H 20.1MM

From what I can tell the 4000 should work in the T2 without modification. The 5000 will not fit with out some serious grinding.

http://www.redrc.net/2008/01/smc-4000-5000-hard-case-lipos/

And these saddle packs should work for anyone with a T1'04

http://www.redrc.net/2008/01/maxamps-74v-lipo-saddle-packs/

Thought this would be of interest too. Should help add some weight back to the car, and would help protect the battery from side impact.

http://www.redrc.net/2008/01/ppd-ez-lipo-battery-mounting-system/

Shawn.

[jarrodH]

here the price list for the saddle packs,

http://www.maxamps.com/products.php?cat=54

[Gorden]

here the price list for the saddle packs,

http://www.maxamps.com/products.php?cat=54

I found this on the above web page.

*** We are no longer carrying EP4600's because of too many dead cells from the factory. If you are looking for a great alternative check out our NEW MaxAmps 4700mah SC cell

Gorden

[Grinder]

here the price list for the saddle packs,

http://www.maxamps.com/products.php?cat=54

I found this on the above web page.

*** We are no longer carrying EP4600's because of too many dead cells from the factory. If you are looking for a great alternative check out our NEW MaxAmps 4700mah SC cell

Gorden

Very interesting Gorden.  It would also be interesting to see if there is more information on failed EP4600 cells from someone without and vested interest in selling an alternative cell or if this is another nail in the NiMh coffin....

[RC51]

We carry 4 different brands, one of which is this cell but we have not had the  difficulties reported here. We currently don't have them in stock to check this, though. The nice thing is that Trinity warrantees them if they are zero v'd prior to soldering so if this was an issue of new cells being dead, they're covered. The trick is not to keep them on the shelf so long that this happens! The rest is a maintenance chore. Oh the perils of NiMh ... The banter on RCTech about Ep vs Ener-G vs IB is brutal! Seems like a lose-lose proposition.

P.

[RC51]

Mick and I will be doing a little of our own testing up in Kamloops - NiMh, LiPo, LiMn, brushed and brushless in the Pro10 cars. It will be interesting to see the on-track difference(s) first hand as opposed to reading or speculating about it!

P.

[BigDaddyT]

here the price list for the saddle packs,

http://www.maxamps.com/products.php?cat=54

I found this on the above web page.

*** We are no longer carrying EP4600's because of too many dead cells from the factory. If you are looking for a great alternative check out our NEW MaxAmps 4700mah SC cell

Gorden

Very interesting Gorden.  It would also be interesting to see if there is more information on failed EP4600 cells from someone without and vested interest in selling an alternative cell or if this is another nail in the NiMh coffin....

To be totally upfront/honest with everyone (despite the fact that we do try to make a profit selling batteries) - I see about 10% DOA's on pretty much every type of NiMH cell coming through the shop (I'm the front-line battery b%tch that goes through the packs before we send them on to anyone else).

I pull those ones and handle the warranty and/or losses from here, so the end user doesn't have as much hassle as they might have if we didn't do a second check. This has happened on EP4200 MKII, EP4200 MKIII, IB4200 (Newest Gen), EnerG 4200, and GREPOW.

Cells we haven't seen yet (and are crossing our fingers for): IB4600, EnerG 4600. However if history serves, we will probably see similar failure rates - I'd love to be wrong though, because losing 10% of cells and/or doing shipping for warranty on 10% of your cells as a retailer pretty much wipes the better part of your profit. Battery pack pricing is driven uncompetitively low by the large on-line stores that don't do any sort of QA and just pass along the headaches to the end user.

I'd love to see LiPo take over in the sense that we have had very good luck with the quality of the LiPo packs that we've sold, and we've actually turned a profit there (I don't mind admitting that!). People just need to remember to be careful with not over charging and over discharging the packs. They last a long time if you take care of them, but if you over discharge, you can hoop them quite easily as well. I worry that might be the downside there until everyone gets used to caring for them.

Anyhow - it's neither here nor there, but I just wanted to chime in my 2 cents with what I've actually seen on the front lines. As Phil said, we've carried almost every type of NiMH cell so far at one point or another, and we work to reduce the burden on the end user, but we're still looking for one that won't have as significant of a DOA rate.

T