Lipo upgrade
 

I am thinking of upgrading from Ni-mh to lipo and was wondering whats a good starter setup? Is a balancer necessary? What kind of charger are you guys using? I am currently running a rooster crawler and 55t, can it handle a 3s? Will my wheel speed improve? or should I also consider dropping down to a 35 or 45t?

Sorry so many questions.

Thanks

lipo are a good upgrade,all my batts. are from max amps and also my chargers.
and the rooster crawler could only take a 2c lipo battery.

If you are happy with your current wheel speed then you can stay 2s lipo and be fine. If you want more wheel speed 3s lipo is all you need. If you change from nimh to 3s as well as add a 35t motor you will be going from a true crawling setup to almost rock racer. There is a huge jump in wheel speed with voltage alone.

As for chargers....you get what you pay for. I also wouldnt get one that doesnt charge 3s even if you decide to stay with 2s because you want to have that option down the road. I like the Triton Series myself. They are a ballance between the professional hyperion chargers that are Texa$ and the cheap stuff. The EQ (http://www.electrifly.com/chargers/gpmm3156.html) will balance as you charge so how can you beat that. I personally had a low end dynamite charger and then just added the electryfly balancer (http://www.electrifly.com/chargers/gpmm3160.html)and then just ballance as I charge.

As for which lipo company. All Vendors on here have good reputations. Here is what I see on most build threads now-a-days MaxAmps, HolmesHobbies, ThunderPower, CKRC, Zippy.

Let us know which way you want to go.

Thanks for the help guys. So I've been looking at available lipo packs and now I'm even more confused. What is 25C, 30C, 50C burst, and such?

C ratings
 

The C rating of the pack is the amount of current the pack can release. The higher the C rating, the larger the load the battery can withstand. For crawling applications a 20C continuous will supply all the current a crawler will need, for one motor anyway.

Hope that helps.

Go to Xcitebattery.com. These are great batterys and are cheap. These are the ones that 86Jeep won Crawlapalooza and ECC with. He is running 3s1p 500's in a berg with 35 turns.

to start.. the rooster CAN handle a 3cell... it just doesnt have a cut of for it, so i would recomend staying away from a 3cell with that esc for now untill you learn more and you get some expereience with lipos.

for chargers. i started by going to max-amps and getting the rtr kit. i race 1/10 st so i got a battery for that rig... max-amp batteries are top notch imo but you can go wrong with the ckrc or thunder power lipo's try and stay around 1300-1500mah.

when you make your final choice. make sure you choose something with a veriety of balanceing options. thts the only thing i dont like about lipo is there are millions of choices of different balance ports

You should always check your facts before expressly saying that something CAN do what it CANNOT...

http://www.teamnovak.com/products/es...ler/index.html

I have personaly seen burned up Roosters from use with both 3 cell Lipo and 8 cell NiMH packs. Manufacturers spec cell and voltage limits for a reason ;-)

As far as balancing Lipo packs, I've found that the Astro Blinky is one of the easiest and most versatile balancers to use...

http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...VSEARCH=blinky

I would get a Hyperion charger like the 0606i ACDC or something like that for small 2-3S Crawling packs.

I personally run the Hyperion Duo with a 35A Power supply, becuase I race with 5S lipos so I need a beefy charger, and having the ability to charge 2 at once is a giant plus.

The rooster cant do 3S, so dont bother. 2S would be nice, but I would get an ESC that can just do 3S.

I'm running a Novak Rooster crawler,Holmes Hobbies Handwound 35T powered by a Holmes 2s 1300 Lipo and LOVE it. Great wheel speed and killer torque with about 35-45 minutes of runtime depending how I drive it.

Thanks for all the input guys. I really appreciate it"thumbsup"

Bumping up my dead thread...

So I finally ordered some lipos, and looking at chargers and such. I ordered some 1400mah 20c 3s lipos. What is the highest SAFE charge rate that I can use to charge these?

Always charge at 1c of the rating, soo your 1400mah pack can be charged at 1.4A, i usually charge a little less say 1A. Easiest way to remember is the pack charge rat is the first 2 decimal places in the Pack mah.

IE:
800mah= .08A
1500mah= 1.5A
5200mah= 5.2A

Hope that helps"thumbsup"

You are going to smoke your rooster running a 3 cell lipo.

Check the recommendations of the battery manufacturer. I have 6 lipos from different companies and some say you can charge at 2 c while some only let you charge at 1c. You can't go wrong with hyperion as a charger.I hae had one for over four years absolutely no problems and charges every battery I have. NIMH, 2, 3 and 4 cel lipo.

The charging question will get you a variety of answers. One thing that is true is that the brand/chemistry of your cells makes a difference. How much difference is a matter of some debate. Hyperion *rates* their 3G line for 5C charging... and you'll still find people telling you to charge those cells at 1C! You can't win in that argument.

Personally, I usually keep an eye on what Everydayflyer over on RCGroups is doing... I think he's charging all his high quality packs at 3C or more now, but you'll want to double check me on that. I know he's charging the Hyperion 3G cells at 4C or 5C. That particular guy has done a lot of testing on many Lipos as well as A123 (he's got a huge log of data from 10C charges on those, but that's different). To parrot him... you'll probably damage the pack (either LiPo or LiFe) through something else (overdischarge, overcurrent during discharge, physical damage) before you damage it by charging above 1C. Please keep safety in mind when aping him though:

Don't charge unattended. Always balance-charge the Lipos. Keep an eye out for weak cells (ones that discharge to a much lower voltage than the others). If using a chemistry that can flame be sure to have a fire extinguisher or some other way to suppress the fire... being there when your room catches on fire won't help you much unless you can put it out.

If I have to sit around and wait (safety first!) for the stupid thing to charge, I want to get it over with. If 2C charging is almost certainly OK for the pack then that's a no brainer. The charger I'm currently using won't go above 2C anyway... if I get my Cellpro 4s repaired then I can do 3C on my 1000mAh packs and I'll probably go ahead and do it...

Above all be safe, you and your house are a lot more valuable than a couple of LiPos. Whether or not your -time- is more valuable is a sort of personal decision.

I would get a hyperion charger they work great. I have had the 0606i for a few months now and love this charger it works great on all my Batt.

Ordered up a FX-R"thumbsup"

Anyone heard anyhting about the Elite 6i charger? i see nit on cheapbatterypack.com but there wasn' too much info about it.

5i manual:
http://www.cheapbatterypacks.com/pdf/elite5ibc.pdf

based on the manual I'd say it's clear that the 5i is based on the IMAX designs, probably a b5... although with FlySky/IMAX's updated manual graphics they use on the newer chargers:
http://www.skyrc.us/indexhome.htm?#/product/Charger/b5/ (that link doesn't work well, you may have to refresh once you get there, or manually go through the products section)
http://www.skyrc.us/pdf/manual_B5.pdf
to me the manual looks most like the Turnigy Accucel-6 (which is based on the FlySky/IMAX stuff of course, as far as I know):
http://www.hobbycity.com/hobbycity/s...CEL_manual.pdf

their new charger, the 6i is probably based on either the B6AC or the B6AC+
http://www.skyrc.us/indexhome.htm?#/...t/Charger/b6a/
http://www.skyrc.us/indexhome.htm?#/.../Charger/b6ap/

if so, their price is better than HobbyCity/HobbyKing. (-and- they ship from the USA instead of HK, which is nice for us US residents at least)

personally I haven't used this charger but now you have some more points of reference when looking for reviews... there should be tons of stuff online about the chargers I mentioned.