HI everyone, Ive been scoring the internet for a good charger thats easy on the wallet. And most of them seem to be around the same price range
and i've narrowed it down to ICE
I can afford the charger but not a power supply
so i wanted to ask could I use one of my old car batteries?
thanks for your help in advance

You better off with a power supply not the car battery. I went the car battery and I end up buying the power supply anyways..

Nick - I would look at this charger:

http://www.horizonhobby.com/Products...rodID=ORI62200

And then this power supply:

http://www.horizonhobby.com/Products...rodID=OFN92135

The total will be the same as the ice charger, and this charger does I believe everything the ice will also.

But if you still decide to go with an ICE, definatley get a power supply.

you can go to radio shack and get 1 for around 40 bucks i think..I belive the radio shack is a 10 amp or something like that...

30 amp ps www.buyreliant.com search "psv 300" best one for 54.95

you can always just mod a regular computer power supply to work, just remember if the computer power supply was junky to begin with, it might not last that long.

On the bright side, it can be real cheap depending on how you do this ) and most computer power supplies are about 15A on the 12v with modern power supply having about 30A on the 12V (the ones with dual 12v rails)

heres one guide, but there are several around google

http://web2.murraystate.edu/andy.bat...OWERSUPPLY.HTM

also, keep in mind, if you are creative, u don't even have to open up a power supply or cut anything. I've mod several power supplies. On occasion, i just use hair pins to get the sucker on and then use an extra Y adaptor so I don't actually cut the power supply itself

That particular charger only goes to 5 amps on charge, most of us running 4200's and 4600's are charging at 6 amps. It only discharges at 1 amp max, the ICE goes to 10 amps. It uses "zero delta V" charge termination, no mention of it being adjustable.

It won't break in motors or run a comm lathe.

It looks more like a charger for fliers than for racers, but it might be usable if the budget won't allow anything else.

I'd go with the ICE and modify a decent old computer power supply. The 12volt battery mentioned in the original post would work fine, but it might not go a full day of race charging without going flat, maybe if you only ran one class and didn't do any motor work you'd be okay, but try to run several classes, and cut comms and break in brushes, and I think you'd kill a 12V battery before the end of the race day unless it was some big-ass battery.

As far as the ICE and a car battery, I use this in the summer outdoors. Correct, it won't get thru a race day with the high capacity batts we have now days. Back in the day with the mighty 1200s I used a lawn mower battery! Needs to be charged, but the ICE is very sensitive to voltage. The old style car battery chargers go way over 15 volts when the battery is fully charged, ya need to be using a "smart" car battery charger, they know to stop or slow down.

I use a 2 amp smart charger, $18 bucks from walmart. Keeps the battery going for 2 to 3 vehicles, 2 ICEs during the day no problem so far. But I'm not discharging/cycling at the track either.

I know it's a Rube Goldberg setup, the reason I do it is I have had too many power failures outdoors, tripped over extension cords, generators run out of gas, etc. That way as long as I check occasionally I know I have stable power for the charging of my RC.

Oh, recommend a deep cycle marine type battery. Not essential, but it should last longer.

As far as power supplys, I really like the Pro Peaks from Ripmax, really light and fairly cheap, 60 to 80. The Pyramid mentioned was one of my options, that's the brand of my old school 25 lb linear monster, worked well for it's time. Personally, I tried the PC thingy, but it was too Ruby Goldberg for me and relatively big & heavy with less friendly edges for packing. Worked OK for charging, but I blew it up trying to use the 30 amp 5 volt output for motor work, found out they don't like surges.

Good luck.

look at this power supply http://cgi.ebay.com/12v-Power-Supply...QQcmdZViewItem. i bought one of these and they are quality. very high power for a low price. the guy ships like the same hour you buy and two days later its there.

You can't go wrong with this one. Cheap for the price, but it works great. I have 3 TC1030 chargers running off it, and I'm adding a 4th charger soon. I was doing 6A charges on my packs simultaneously without issues. I started out with a cheap 12A unit, moved up to the RadioShack 20A unit, and finally with this one as I added more chargers (my kids & their friends). For a few bucks less you can get the psv 200, but you might as well get the bigger one.

you best bet is a power supply cause youl find many other uses for it with other things. i use the muchmore power supple it was 200 bucks but it works awesome