Got mine today as well. These battries are high quality better than some of the big dollar battries I have seen. Thanks again Danny and everyone at SMC. I am waiting on my ESC to come in to test these out. I will post some feedback after my first run.

I got mine today. They look very nice. I like how it is labeled on the box for 3.86v per cell. Makes me confident that their is actually quality control. I once got a battery from another company with one dead cell on arrival. When will these batteries be ROAR approved?

We test all packs to make sure they are in balance and the IR is within the specs we expect it to be at not way off.

As far as ROAR goes we're waiting on them to give us the new approval process and fees then we will make a decision if it's worth it to get ROAR on the lower priced packs.

Looking to buy a new charger. What amps are you guys charging at? or Danny, what do you recommend charging a factory spec 6500 60c at?

1C charge (6.5 amps) will make them last the longest. If you're in a hurry you can do 2-3C charge rates.

Hideeho
I charge regularly at 20a (3.07c) with a Hyperion 720i.

I personally think 2C-3C is fast enough and still gives a good charge. When going to high you will not get as much mAh into the pack. If your using a high end charger that has adjustable termination then you can charge at higher rates and get a full charge.

I never tested to see how charge rate impacts cycle life. Maybe someday I will do such a test.

Thanks for the responses guys. I'm currently charging at 5a and with the bigger batteries I bought it's just taking forever. The charger I'm looking at is 10a. How long would it take to charge the above battery? Sorry for all the noob/off topic questions but these lipo charge rates confuse me. Don't want to wreck my new smc batteries!

Assuming the pack was pretty much dead when started, I'd estimate a 6500mah pack would take about 40 minutes to fully charge at 10 amps. This works out to about a 1.5c charge rate. There's certainly no risk to the battery when charging at this rate, but unless you have a lot of batteries that you brought to the track fully charged, you'll be waiting for your charger a lot more than you'll be driving. If you plan on being in the hobby for a while, I'd suggest buying the most powerful charger and power supply you can afford as charging at a 3c rate, sometimes higher, will save you time every time you need to charge. Charging at a 3c rate, in this case that works out to 19.5 amps, you'd be ready to go in about 20 minutes instead.

Awesome, thanks for the info.

For those looking for a great charger at a good price look into the PL6 by Revolectrix. This charger can charge up to 40 amps and is fully adjustable. For those charging dual pack setups or more they have a multiple parallel adapter board (MPA) which allows you to charge multiple packs in parallel. If you calculate the price per power/watts of this charger I think it's the best bang for the buck.

Best charger I've ever used, I want to marry my PL6

I set the charge to 4.18v termination to be easy on the packs, don't notice any difference on the track. Cheap chargers will slightly over charge and that's no good.

I could swear PL6 back to back with old turnigy charger the pack felt hotter coming off the PL6... placebo?

Sooo many wonderful adjustments to play with on your notebook and you add the MPA... oh man! Small tight package 6 lipo charger

I don't think charging up to 4.20v per cell is bad for the pack. I'm sure that 4.20v per cell is on the conservative already as this is the standard set by the engineers. It's used for cell phone cells and all other devices using Lipos.

The two things I believe hurt a pack the most is running it down to low. Typically you don't want to go below 80% of it's mAh and leaving it fully charged for extended periods of time.

Very true.

And the powerlab will put you at 4.2... not 4.23 or whatever a cheapo may terminate at.
I just set it a hair low to be nice. I don't have to worry about sag at the end of a main with my 7200 so there's no downside to it for me

I agree, PL6 After having a number of Hyperions, iChargers, etc, I'm really happy with the Powerlab chargers.