sharkbait

just wondering what racers do in reguards to buying batteris, do you buy them preassembled or do you build them yourself. If you do build them, how difficult is it?? and what do I need to do it myself.

racingboy14

iTrader: (25)

I build most of my battery packs and if you are a good solderer it is not that difficult. The biggest thing is you need a GOOD soldering iorn. I have an 80 watt weller iorn and its perfect. You also need an xacto battery bars and some high quality solder but most of all a battery jig to hold the batteries in postion. Once you get the hand of it, it becomes very easy and you can save yourself money by doing it yourself.

A. Rhodes

iTrader: (32)

Most people will build their own packs. You would need the following:

Good soldering iron - 60-80 watts
Solder
Battery Bars
Sand paper or dremel
Battery jig - Deans or Trininty (there are others)
Super glue or shoe goo - this is optional - for gluing packs together once soldered
Connectors - Deans or Tamiya if you do not plan to hard wire
Shrink wrap or matched label protector (you can also use avery return lables)


Packs are very easy to build, just take your time and make sure not to get the cells too hot when soldering.

Scuff the ends of the cells with sand paper or dremel, clean off with motor spray, put cells in the jig, tin cell (some skip this step), tin battery bar, solder to cell. Just make sure you get the polarity correct or you will short out the cells.

TylerOwenby

i buy mine not made and no it is not difficult unless you dont have a good soldering iron. thing you will need is battery bars,soldering gun and solder, battery jig(really need 1), shrink wrap(optional just keeps batteries nice and tight. and thats it really unless you use deans then u need wire and a deans plug.

or8ital

iTrader: (38)

By time you buy everything you arent saving much vs spending to have it pre-assembled. Most of the preassembled packs Ive had seem done much better then Ive been able to do myself. Less solder but a better hold. Just my experience.

swopemike

iTrader: (6)

I'll second that. I have bought all of my prebuilt packs from promatchracing.com via my LHS. They basically spot weld the bars in place. I found out that their technique gave better performance on the track, specifically better contact and lower IR than I can get myself.

One thing to think about, sometimes I have also seen the "low solder level" bars come off when the car or truck took a really hard hit. They seem a little more prone to this than packs with "lots" of solder on them. Not terrible, a small tradeoff for much better performance than I seem to be able to get. I would check batt bars over periodically and also, just like any other car part, after any hard crash.

GymBeam

iTrader: (4)

whether u build your own packs or not, if your a racer u should have a good solder, and a dremel anyway