LiPO Repair Advice
 

The other night, I had a head on collision with a younger kid driving the wrong way around the track. My buggy was completely undamaged but my, five run old, LiPO didn't make it out so well. After splitting the hard-case, it looks like the tab broke off of the positive terminal of the battery. It's a Turnigy battery, so it wasn't very expensive, but having to toss it after five runs would suck...

I've done some searching on repairing LiPO's and it looks like they can be repaired in some cases. I'm not sure if I could repair it in this case, so I'm turning to you guys for advice. Can I just solder the positive side back onto the metal piece sticking out of the battery? Anything I need to look out for, when re-soldering? (I know, try to not short the battery out!) How much heat can these things take?

Thanks for any help!

I've soldered on Lipos before . Better have a good iron if you take this on. Gotta be quick and careful. I think 140 is the magic temp. If your nervous about it toss it . If you don't solder well . Toss it. With lipos if in doubt. Toss it. Better safe than sorry.

It broke off too close to the cell to repair.

There needs to be a little bit of the tab left in order to solder to it. Even then you need Zinc based solder(extremely toxic/nasty) to solder to the aluminum tabs.


If there is a little bit of tab left with solder on it, you can fix it.

IMHO if the impact was hard enough to damage the cells on the inside of a hard case lipo, 5 runs old or not, yo should bin it. There could be some damage to the cells which you may not be able to see.

For the sake of a $20-50 battery, why run the risk of repairing the battery and for it to then possibly combust and catch on fire, espeically when your talking about lipos. Could do some real damage to your car (if its in there) which you probably have $100's/$1,000's invested.

You are correct about the zinc solder (and flux) needed since most if not all Lipo cells have aluminum tabs. Trying to solder aluminum with conventional 60/40 is likw trying to use a noodle to tighten screws.

Why not try SMC lipo's, if damaged in this way they do offer a 2 year damage protection. You send them a copy of the receipt, picture of the lipo and then if approved they will sell you a new one at a 60 percent discount.

I think that is pretty darn fair and I really do not see anyone else doing that.

On another note I would just get rid of that lipo. God forbid it catches fire in your buggy your out more then just a lipo.

Andrew

Thanks for all the advice guys!

I decided to ditch the LiPO. Like you said, it's not worth catching my car on fire for!

protek does 50% up to a year for any reason.