Battery warming?
 

Most of the rules prohibit battery warming but allow for very high charge/discharge cycles to achive the same results which are very bad for battery life. In real 1/1 auto racing & industry there is an ideal battery operating temperature that is achieved by warming or cooling the batteries. So basically we are forced to destroy our batteries to achieve maximum performance?!

You can opt to treat your batteries a certain way and there are consequences to that. I think finding a balance is important for each person. And that is not just in respect to LiPo batteries.

And, for the vast majority of us, running a discharge cycle isn't the difference between winning and losing.

Some I race with automatically change batteries every year. Old batteries used for practice only. I thought most tracks had been cracking down on super high charging. I know the places I’ve run have. We had a few try last summer, kept tripping the generator. Causing everyone to lose power.

Racers used to use heating pads/bags whatever to get the batteries hot to drop IR's. That got banned as Im sure it caused some fires. Then they started discharging and charging at high rates. I think its even better than heaters, as it heats the battery internally. Heaters need to hold the battery at 100-120deg so heat gets into the core of the battery. But with discharging/charging it heats from the inside out. So instead of keeping a battery at high temps for 30-60min or however long, you just cycle once or twice before your race. High temps can be just as damaging as high amps, possibly more.

Lipos have been getting more resistant to racer abuse as they've developed and the current gen stuff seems pretty awesome as far as that goes. I have batteries that are a year old that had most of their life cycling at 40amps and lived just fine and IR's are barely starting to degrade. Lipos from 3 years ago wouldn't hold up this well.

Racers will always look for every bit of power and advantage they can. Pushing boundaries are part of racing. If someone is cycling their stuff, at this point its not really a safety issue. Honestly if it gets banned, then you'll get stuck buying more expensive packs that naturally have low IRs. Like Trinity/Reedy/Fantoms vs buying budget packs and cycling them. Or like this post, might start heating the batteries. Honestly I think thats even more dangerous. So pick your poison!

Which rules are you referring to? ROAR has a 1C charge limit. In Australia we have a 10A charge limit. Whether those rules are actually being enforced is another matter entirely.

Over here beside no heating no more than 2C charge with a max of 16A is alowed, a discharge of no more than 20A and a temperature not more than 10 degrees above outside temperature checked before the start of the race/heat .

Sadly there is no max controll over it so we do see people who hide their displays of their chargers and see extra cables running to the lipo bags.

Since you're trying to compare our toy cars with 1/1 racing, I would encourage you to attend a drag race and get a "pit pass"... you'll see the most competitive cars are the ones who completely rebuild their engine after every race.... that's the equivalent of 45 min of build time to less than 3 seconds of race time... so YES if you want o achieve maximum performance, then you will degrade the life of the product.

Back to toy cars... same goes with tires... if you want a longer lasting tire, then go with a harder compound, but you will lose performance if you select a compound that is too hard... the better the performance, the higher the expense... welcome to racing!

I charged my fantom 5800 packs at 25a (4c) and got somewhere between 12-18 months before they started to puff a bit. Not bad when I only had 2 packs which were used for practice and racing every weekend.

We are not forced to do anything its a choice 1 makes I choose not to choose that way.. to me its all about the FUN.. back in the Nixx days Ive seen guys put 20 amps into a 6 cell pack then you would see them make the mad dash to A exit door.

Roar does not enforce the 1c charging limit unless they don't like you.

Source: 2019 1/10 nats at my home track, I charged at 40a the entire events. Some official started going around once but I didn't hear anyone getting busted for it. A lot of people had charge bags but I didn't

We usually had our soft case 6s 5000 lipos in the sun when flying helicopters. The IRs were down low in the 0.5 or less. The lipos stayed like bricks and were cool after the flight. I am using a 2s in the touring car, start off at 5.5mO and leave it on the curb for 20 mins, it drops to around 3.2 each cell. It's easier than cycling since I have time between heats.

Yup, I just leave them in the sun as well.

I do not think the discharge/charge current is what is most degrading. 12th mod can dump an 8k pack in 8 minutes which is a 60amp AVERAGE discharge rate. Considering how little time you’re at full throttle it’s an easy estimate that you’d see brief spikes over 100amps. And the batteries come off the track at 120-130 degrees. I have a couple packs with 30+ runs that are still within a couple 100 mah capacity from brand new and unchanged ir. These packs which I logged as 7800mah discharged to 3.0 one time generally come off the track at 3.5v and take about 6800-7000 on a recharge.

What is most damaging to packs is a deep discharge. The discharge/charge cycles people put in packs are often discharged at 30-40amps down to 3.0v. That’s too low. Set the cutoff to 3.4v. Going super deep for that last 10% does nothing for temp increase or ir reduction.