newbie ?s
 

just go my batteries for my cc and had one charged. as impatient as i am i hooked up only one battery. im assuming it takes two batteries to run it , as it would not run on only one battery. and on the receiver it has plugs in the channel 1 and 2 slot but there is the third slot that says batt which is empty is this ok or is something supposed to be there?

I'm not using a stock ESC so I can't help there, but I think that's been addressed on the first page of this forum already.

As for the battery slot, it's fine if it's empty; if you have a gas-powered car, you will need to use a battery pack, to power the receiver and servos, that plugs in there, but the ESC provides that power through the leads already.

History lesson:
When ESCs were first introduced in the mid 1980s, they were not very advanced and still needed to use separate batteries to power the receiver and steering servo. After about 5 years battery eliminator circuitry, or BEC, was developed, which meant you didn't need the extra battery cluttering up the chassis. Since the late 80's this has been on every ESC, but sometimes guys will use a receiver pack if they have several servos or very powerful servos that can drain the main battery pack more quickly than usual.

thanks

Im also newbie like you! flexj but I learned a lot here on this forum. Anyways regarding about your ?'s it will not run with one battery unless you short out the B1+ and B1- wires together. Then the second battery input can be used and the vehicle runs on a single pack. On two packs input (14.4v) the vehicle is very peppy, yet easy to crawl still. thats per

http://www.rccrawler.com/forum/duratrax-cliff-climber/131769-holmes-cliff-climber.html

for the reciever question nothing goes in the battery slot as far as I know!

ok well i hooked up one completely charged battery and one half way charged battery and it just will do nothing when i turn radio and reciever/esc on

Patience young one LOL I wondered why Duratrax originally recommended an expensive charger by name in their manual, but with two batteries it makes a lot of sense.

I'm thinking about picking one up myself, the Duratrax Onyx, because I can do multiple packs or different types at the same time (1/10 packs, Mini-T, Micro RS4, my custom Cliff Climber pack, transmitter packs, etc).

A note for 'newbs'; money spent on good equipment like this is money wisely spent. You can get away with a radio with the basic features to just drive the car, but if you're going to spend some pretty good sums of money on batteries for your cars and trucks, I wouldn't even think about saving $20-30 now. A quality charger will last you years and years; I've had one for almost 15 years now and it still works perfectly. (doesn't do NiMH and only has two preset trickle and peak rates, so I'm finally looking to replace it)

It's the same thing with a soldering iron; get yourself a good 'soldering station', one that will cost $75-100. Would you risk overheating a $150 ESC, $50, $60 battery pack, etc with a bad iron? The weaker the iron, the longer you need to heat the part being soldered, which means more heat goes into the battery cell, motor, or whatever.

i dont understand whats wrong two fully charged batteries and nothing works

i feel real smart... the wires from my esc to the reciever were hooked up backwards. now it has power so after work ill mount the batteries and be bashing after that. thanks.