I've used Lipos before, but I had a cheapo $10 charger that did nothing more than turn a fred LED green when they were charged. No settings, no options, nothing.

I decided I should get a proper charger that actually told me whats going on so I grabbed an Imax B6 from hobby King (the genuine version) and hooked it up. Holy hell there's a lot going on there. I was hoping for a more automatic charger that just let me know progress and what was going on, but now I'm presented with all sorts of options.

Notably, I can choose how many amps to charge the battery (0.1a-5.0a)....I have no idea what's safe or recommended. it defaults to 0.1.....which I imagine is a stupidly small amount of current.

It's mostly stuff like that, it has options for it, and I can set it, but (and this is maybe what I get for buying a cheap Chinese charger) I don't know what the values should be, and it doesn't tell me.

Feeling like I should have listened to whoever on here told me to get the Radiant Ascend instead :-P

what are the specs of your batteries?

They are Zippy cheap LiPos from Hobby King 1800mAh 2S1P 20C. That's about all the info HK gives on them. The other battery I have is a stock Team Associated RC18 1100mAh NiMH.

I'm not too concerned with the NiMH since it just came free with the car....and has probably been sitting around forever.

To find the 1C charge rate, which is whats recommended, take the Mah capacity and divide by 1000. So your 1800MaH pack would be 1.8A and your 1100 pack would be 1.1A

Not familiar with those specific products but, Set charge amp to 1.8 and charge or balance. Make sure your esc low voltage cutoff is at 3.2 per cell or more. Your good to go.

Hello Finch. almost all lipos can be charged at 1c...that is mah x .001= 1c(standard charge rate in amps..)..
so ur 1800 mah x .001 = 1.8 amps.. on 2 cell or 8.4 volt...

theirs alot of useful info on the web Maxxamp has one of the best READS

and when they list a 2cell as 7.4volts that is standing voltage NOT FULL CHARGE VOLTAGE.. a single cell is 4.2volts @ full charge..so a 2 cell is 8.4Volts full charge

http://www.rchelicopterfun.com/rc-lipo-batteries.html

you have 2 major things to worry about OVER Chargeing and Over discharging..both can cause smoke fire bad stuff to happen..sorry can not find maxamp link just do a google

Ok all of this is immensely helpful. I'll go check out those links.

Thanks a ton.