Discharger recommendations
 

Hi all,
I’ve decided to get the Cayote X5 charger for 1/10 touring car stock racing using 2S lipos, which is great as it can charge up to 40A but can only discharge at 8A, so I need an external discharger and I was hoping to get some recommendations from this forum.

So far I’ve looked at the following dischargers.

Hitec AD380
Pro Performance RC inc Annihilator (100A)
SKYRC BD250

Any thoughts would be great.

it would also be great to hear from users of the Cayote X5 on how good you find it.

Saying this, in your opinion, is getting the X5 and a separate discharger the right way to go, or do I just need to suck it up and plump up the cash for a dx6 or 456duo and get an RC discharge and never think about it again?

I should mention I’m racing 25.5t and 17.5t stock, so high charge/discharge rates are common.
kn about a year or so, I’ll be switching to mod. Using stock to relearn racing after a few decades out of the hobby.

Thanks

It really depends what you want...are you just looking for a discharger to quickly discharge the pack after a run or you want the ability to do cycling/heat up the pack/lower IR? If all you want is just a simple discharger then I would get the Skyrc BD250. The Hitec AD380 although has a higher discharge rate, all its other bells and whistle seems very useless. No idea about the Pro Performance RC inc Annihilator, just seems like a big resister pulling 100A. That just sounds like an disaster waiting to happen.

The SkyRC or Hitech (basically rebrand of SkyRC) cant discharge to storage voltage or run cycling programs. No idea about the Pro Performance RC one. If you want to do cycling at high discharge rates then I dont think the X5 is capable of doing that. You are better of buying a different charger like iChargers with that function and have either an external resistor or regenerative discharge where you discharge power back into a cell. \

RCdischarger is a pretty hard pill to swallow at 400+ bucks, but its a complete package which can handle high discharge rates doesnt just turn electrical energy into heat.

thanks for the feedback. Doing stock ideally means that the rcdischarger mixed with an icharger would be best, but moving to mod next year means the X5 would be more than efficient. You’re right, the RCdischarger is really expensive, but maybe it’s a “buy once cry once” situation.
doing stock I would want to lower the IR for sure.

What do you mean "more than efficient"?

I mean if you are going all into stock racing right now and set on doing the whole cycle charging but dont want to blow 800+ just on the charger setup, just get the icharger first and build yourself a cheap resister bank discharger. It will still function the same but you are wasting a lot of power (but probably a good heater during winter) but to be honest, you wont be paying the power bill at the track anyways.

And if you move away from stock and into mod, you still have a capable charger for all your needs.

I would go with the RC Discharger, we have made a believer out of many people at Apex that were on the fence about it. They would bring us packs to cycle to see the IR difference. Usually it was only a week or two until they had one after that. Owner is a good guy as well.

To add some info in favor of the RC Discharger, you do not need to buy a separate power supply if using an RC Discharger with an ICharger.

An ICharger has proven its worth for a very long time. When you add everything up, starting from scratch, the RC Discharger is not that much more than an ICharger+Power Supply+Discharger.

Also with the RC Discharger, you can still use both channels at the same time which is invaluable if running multiple classes.

You're over thinking it. You don't need the high amp cycles to race stock, especially if you're planning on moving on to mod soon. The gains are minimal and it degrades your batteries quickly.

I agree with this!!!

Kris321

I did a video on different discharge methods, but to save you an hour and a half of your time, just use heat. There is no performance gain using a discharger to heat your batteries vs using a warming blanket/heated lipo sleeve. Some tracks don't allow external heating but don't blink an eye with racers discharging and charging at 40A+. That is an entriely different conversation though.

My recommendation, pick up an iCharger and then build/buy a discharge bank. You still want to store your batteries and cycle them every once in awhile when not in use, so a discharge bank is a good idea to have, but you can get away with the internal loads for iCharger if you don't care to wait.

What about when I go to modified, would that make the RC discharger pointless as charging and discharging seems to only require about 8A?

With the battery that comes with the RC discharger, do I have to charge/discharge it the same way as the race packs or is there a different process?

You could always sell it to get some of your investments back if you dont think you need the rcdischarger anymore for mod but I would just keep it. There will be times where you cant finish the packs for the day and need a quicker way to discharge than the internal resisters on the charger.

Since the battery in the rc discharger is just purely a storage bank for you to discharge into and it has a BMS to control the voltage and capacity, you shouldnt have to do anything with it.

How good is your driving? Can you for 5 or 6 minutes run perfect fast laps ranking you into the world top?

With stock racing the currents are much lower and so the loss over the internal resistance is also low. The gain you can get with a lower IR is lost when you make one error with driving.

Sounds good thanks. Also, if I want to plug in a tire warmer, what ports would be available on this combo?

Whilst I agree with you, everyone at my club charges/discharges at 30A to 40A cycling with stock. Just seems to be the obsession to bring down IR.

Perfect thanks, I’ll save up then and wipe my eyes when my cc payment comes in.

I race against people that do that and I have no trouble keeping up without it.