Originally Posted by RC Tragic

Hi Guys,

Apart from John Hanson's reply (thank you) no-one above appears to realize that the NiMh cells can be quite deadly when they explode.

The most recent & spectacular failure I can quote was Sonny Pearces pack exploding at a Chargers indoor title event at Leo's old track. I was standing just outside the door of the upstairs pit room when it went off & if not for the wall inbetween I'm sure I would have been hit by parts of it. The race meeting was held up while everyone tried to figure out what had happened. Fortunately Sonny wasn't sitting at his pit bench when it went up or he may have lost an eye.

My point is this, so far I am surprised at the histeria surrounding LiPo's. They are far more reliable from my experience than NiMh's & as yet I've not seen anything more serious than swelling, so why are we treating them differently than the existing option, NiMh's.

I have however seen a lot of drivers with NiMh cells "hissing" because they've been overheated during charging & cells damaged from being dislodged from their mounting during race incidents & scraping on the ground. I've even had one example where one of our local juniors managed to short out his pack on the Carbon Fibre chassis plate when it had cut through the plastic shrinkwrap battery covers & burnt the chassis & destroyed the cells.

I also believe that towards the end of last year electric racing in at least one European country was completley shut down while they investigated recent problems with exploding cells. (i'm not completely sure of my facts on that one though)

Despite all of the problems with NiMh's we all soldier on blindly but when it comes to LiPo's everyone breaks into a sweat, all I'm asking is that the two types of cells be treated equally.

Once again these are my own personal observtions & not those of my beloved Logan Club.

Regards
Martin Nichols