building battery packs.

[radio]

Hey, I was wondering how do I make my own packs for my crawler (AX-10)so I can mount them on the front axle. Also, I have a used 8 cell 3600 reedy hump pack(nihm), is it possible to make this one pack into two 4 cell packs for my front axles? Im using a Traxxas XL-5 esc, Novak 55 motor,and a Hitec 645mg servo. Your help will REALLY help. thanks. ;)

[Sharkey]

sub c cells are very hard to make work on an axial. i run 4 cells on the front axle and 2 on the rear, but to get the weight down on the axle i had to build my own 4-link plates. 8 cells would be a lot of weight in the truck, with 6 cells mine is a tank. id recomend going to lipo if you want the extra voltage.

if you want to try building your own packs, you will need a soldering iron thats at least 70 watts (i use a 100 watt), battery bars, 14 gauge wire, shrink wrap and connectors (i prefer deans plugs). you want to run the cells in series, so when you connect them you want positive on one cell going to negative on the next. figure out your configuration you want to run first, lay it out and make sure its feasable. first take a little bit of sandpaper and rough up the ends of the cells and clean them off. with the hot soldering iron touch the end of the cell and put a bit of solder on it. avoid keeping the soldering iron on for more than a couple seconds or you can overheat the cell. once you have some solder on a cell take the battery bar and hold it over the cell with a pair of pliers and take the soldering iron and push down on the battery bar for a couple seconds till the solder melts, then remove the iron and wait till the solder solidifies. now take the next cell, tin it (get a small blob of solder on it) and solder it to the other cell you just put the bar on. continue with this till you get your cells configured the way you want. if your running cells front and back (in your case 4 and 4) solder a wire to one side of the pack and run it to the back, again hook positive to negative. at this point you will have two 4 cell packs connected in series with a single wire. now solder a wire on the positive side of the pack, and another to the negative. at this point you want to put the shrinkwrap over the packs and heat it up with a heat gun or hairdrier. now solder the wires to your plug and your ready for use.

[radio]

Hey Sharkey, man, thank a lot that really put things in perspective for me. Your help really helped