breaking battery leads
 

Am I the only one having this issue? My battery leads keep breaking off the battery inside. It alum strip coming out of the cells keep tearing off. I don't pull on the wires to lift the battery out of the car so that leads me to think they're breaking from vibration.

I'm thinking about cracking open the other cases and using hot glue on the leads.

what batteries?

One was a turnigy and the other a gens ace. At first I thought bad luck. The second time I was thinking Wtf! It sucks the Cells are fine. I can't get solder to stick to the things. They did but my stuff flows right off.

I'm going to try a few more tricks to solder it.

You will be unsucessful soldering regular or silver solder to aluminum tabs. You need to get zinc solder and flux for zinc solder in order to make a bond. Cheap Battery Packs sell the stuff.

yeah thats the stuff I was going to try. but its very hard to find. even that place in your link doesn't have any in stock. it's said that at least for 2 months that I've been looking. anyplace else wants more for the solder than i can get a battery for.

Maybe you got a fake one. You'd better get a new one.

ok so I shot that place an email and Mike I presume the owner told me he's no longer going to sell that stuff. it's too expensive and he doesn't sell enough of it.

If the problem is chronic you may have an issue in setup.

The battery wires connecting to the ESC may not have enough slack causing a lot of stress as the chassis flexes. Or I guess too much slack can make the wires move around like jump ropes doing damage over time as well.

Or if the battery can move in the tray that can put some yank on the wires too.

With inboard batteries I would guess that a bad habit pulling the bullets out can also cause stress in the battery.

I would try to find the root of this, it is possible to just have bad luck and lose a few packs like this, but it is wise to look into why that is happening.

ok it's only happened to the 7.4s I use in my B4.1. too much wire is more likely. but after taking the batteries apart there is nothing on the ends holding the soldered tabs stable. if they would glue or tape them I doubt I'd be having a problem. the tab that comes out of the packs are what's tearing off.


I think I might try a hotter soldering station.

can you take a picture of the issue. I am having trouble visualizing here.

this isn't a very good example because I already purposely cut the rest away to throw it away.
but i dug it out of the trash to show you a picture.

the silver tabs that come out of the cells is what I can't get solder to stick to.
obviously it can be soldered but I can't seem to get any of the solder I have to work. it's either the fault of the solder or my iron (station) can't get hot enough.
it's only a 40w iron. so that might be why. the brown looking goop on the upper tab is flux I never bothered to clean back off after I decided to toss it in the garbage.

anyway, the two tabs on the untapped side used to be together. but for whatever reason they broke apart. it sucks because both of these cells are in great condition.

I overheard a few guys at the track today talking about his batteries have done the same thing to him.

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7431/...1f462fde_h.jpg

That looks bad to me.. like it has damage beyond the tabs being unsoldered. It looks like the lipo itself might have roasted. I could be way off, just have this one picture to judge from, but I would salt bath that one and get something else.

it only looks like that from me.
the battery is actually fine.

It's not your iron. You can't flow lead/tin solder onto aluminum, you need a zinc solder.