Bad Battery Buzz

[jarrodH]

i think that theres a couple reasons why we dont run lipo.

1 there are many packs with huge mah , most all look the same no matter the capacity, so ther would be a giant difference between the races,

2 some cars cant phisycally run lipo bateries, so alot of people need to get a newer chassis,

3, im not shure on this, but can you runa lipo batery on a regular esc?

then theres the actual cost of the bateries and the special chargers. which there would then be 50+ chargers here that nobody could sell?

i dont hate lipos, but i couldnt continue to race if we switched..


if im wrong on this let me know,

my .02

[Grinder]

Hopefully we'll get an answer in the near future as to what their intentios are.

http://www.rctech.net/forum/showthread.php?p=3456513

[Matt S]

i think that theres a couple reasons why we dont run lipo.

1 there are many packs with huge mah , most all look the same no matter the capacity, so ther would be a giant difference between the races,

2 some cars cant phisycally run lipo bateries, so alot of people need to get a newer chassis,

3, im not shure on this, but can you runa lipo batery on a regular esc?

then theres the actual cost of the bateries and the special chargers. which there would then be 50+ chargers here that nobody could sell?

i dont hate lipos, but i couldnt continue to race if we switched..


if im wrong on this let me know,

my .02

1 lipo batterys have huge capacity but most lipo packs you would run are around 4500 mah, there are company's matching 4500s allready

2 the only cars that i know of that cant run lipo are the t2 06 and tamiya 415 msx
what other ones cant


3 lipo can be ran on any esc. it has the same voltage as a 6 cell pack
just watch the speed and punch of the car



why dont we run lipo

just SPEC CHECK it

like only duralite and orion lipo

if its goodenough for tamiya championship series its good enough for us

my $.25

[cyrrus]

matt

Any chassis like the xray 04 which uses a saddle pack.  

Hey I was not saying to completly go lipo.  I was just saying that why don't we run both together.  

I do know that Orion is has a proto.  of a saddle lipo pack in development. But is not planning on releasing it soon as there is not enough of a demand for it yet.

[Grinder]

Just to clear any misconceptions up...

LiPo (or LiMn) cells will run on any ESC but you need to ensure that you don't over discharge the cells.  The newer ESCs will detect low voltage and cut off power to the motor.  There are add ons you can use if your ESC doesn't have LVC (low voltage cutoff).  For racing this isn't really necessary as you just need to recharge after your race.  You really only need one battery pack for the whole season (25 race days x 4 cycles = 100 total cycles) as opposed to a few races where NiMh drops off.

There are packs that should fit in any car.  The Duralite 4900 mAh cells work fine in my '04 with no modifications.  You can also get LiPo saddle packs from MaxAmps.

The discharge curve at 30A on my LiMn 3800 mAh pack is virtually identical (the graph all but overlaps) to a brand spanking new set of IB 4200 (before they gave up the ghost).  I propose that these would be a suitable replacement as they are identical to the IBs in voltage/current and they will last an entire season.

LiPo don't require discharge trays or any maintainance - just charge and go.  Most chargers will charge LiPo (unless you have a 20 year old HiIQ charger of course).  The rest of the industry has all but dropped NiMh and has gone Lithium.  Can you imagine running your cell phone or I-Pod on NiMh?

I talked to the owner of Duralite and he said he would sell the club the TrakPower 4900 mAh packs for $110 per pack.  That would last us an entire season of racing and he will stand behind his product  100%  He also has chargers and balancers if anyone needs them and will also sell those at a discounted price to the club.  This by no means means that we need to buy our cells from him as there are plenty of other manufactures out there.

I'm just tired of going week after week fighting batteries instead of racing....

[cyrrus]

Well why don't we have a a general meeting with the whole club.  I would like to see that, then let it be in the hands of the exc.  I have no problems with the desision they have made I just think This is a major move and would like to see what everyone has to think about this idea.

To bad they still don't have lipo for 12 scale yet.

[haddow]

the battery just touches the belt in one spot at the very edge. It would work perfectly fine and although it looks weird I dont think the weight distribution would be bad at all.

[haddow]

Also as saddle packs have been mentioned here is how I turned 1 pack into a saddle pack for my pan car. I just split the two cells apart (carefully) and made tabs for soldering etc.

[WhoDoYouThink]

Keep fighting the good fight Kurk!

I for one am finished with these extremely unreliable IB4200 NiMH cells!  I refuse to spend good money after bad on junk!

When the rest of my IB4200 cells die, and we all know they will, that will be the the last time I support a manufacture that absolutely HAD to know they had a faulty product in the pipeline, yet kept right on selling it to their unsuspecting customers! I hold the various battery matchers to task as well, they MUST have seen a much higher failure rate than normal for these IB4200 cells when they were in the process of matching them.
I wonder, did they send them back to IB and receive replacement cells?

Bring on the 21st century... bring on the LiPo!

I'd try the saddle back lipos in my 04 X-Ray tomorrow if I could!
I'm more than ready to embrace them for our Club's racing purposes "IF"  they turn out to be as bullet proof as people claim.

Lipos have certainly showed well in the electric R/C aircraft hobby.
I would hope it isn't too long until the R/C car hobby and the sanctioning bodies adopt lipos too.
But having said that, I'm afraid we might have too much of an "Old Boys Club" in place to allow change to happen very quickly!

[Grinder]

I don't think this warrents a general meeting.  Express your concerns and desires on the web page and argue your case and the Executive will make a decision that is most benificial to the entire club.  They haven't failed us yet.

[SgRddY]

it might be a little too late to talk about lipo for this summer as i (we) already spent our cash on the IB's.  and i want to make full use of it for the season.  going head to head with the guys running lipo and the ones running nimh cells there could be a huge disadvantage.  i am in for lipo next year.  so much cheaper and with a lot less gears to carry around for discharging and all.

[Grinder]

There is NO difference in performance with the LiMn 3800 and the newest IB 4200 batteries so no one would be at an advantage.  While you may have working battery packs many of us do not.  I would also like to race with the $360 worth of useless batteries I have.  Last race the last of my batteries packed it in and I'm not willing to waste any more money on these junk cells.  I don't want to buy more batteries but week after week is passing by and my thousands of dollars in race gear is held captive.  So what are those of us who bought club packs that don't work suppose to do?

I'm not suggesting to run LiPo because they are niffty but because many of us are in a real crunch and unable to race and we need an alternative to let us continue to race.

[SgRddY]

i do have 2 bad cells in one pack and 1 bad cell in the other.  my packs are not perfect either.  i think the club has few extra packs, maybe they can split them up and replace our bad cells while we wait for the replacement cells to come.  i know it's not perfect but it would get us going for now.  and if there is no difference in performance then i don't really care what kind of packs ppl want to run.  put a hydrogen power plant on there for all i care if they have the same power output and weight

[Tom]

I'm not suggesting to run LiPo because they are niffty but because many of us are in a real crunch and unable to race and we need an alternative to let us continue to race.

Well, to those who don't already have LiPo batteries and chargers lying around, they are nifty.  There are apparently lots of people in a crunch that don't have LiPo as an alternative at the moment.

To say that we can start running LiPo right now is unfair to those who haven't experimented with this different battery type.  To continue with the status quo is problematic as well, since a number of people in our club have bought crappy batteries in a group buy.

I can't support the idea of running LiPo for our Speed Weekend race, since I don't know enough about real-world performance advantages of one type over another, and mostly because this would be a last-second rule change to an invitational race, which is not a good thing to do.

Let's not try to rush to hasty decisions in the next couple days, even though lots of racers have bought junk.

[Matt S]

you can put a stick pack and a lipo pack in the 04 xray

with the stickpack kit