Which charger? Help please
 

I'm needing to purchase a charger that will be used for receiver lipos on nitro but also I'm going to be buying my son a electric car not sure what yet but not sure what type and what I should be looking for in a charger as I'm not very knowledgable when it comes to rc electronics such as motors , batteries and the like, I'd rather purchase something that can cater to us both and that's good quality once rather than buying cheap and it's limited in what we can use it for and it has to have an ac plug also any help is good
Fizzy

What size battery?

The receiver battery is a 2s 7.4volt but I think for the car they use 4s or 11. Something like I said new to the electric side of things

Hi Fizzy,
If you just want a general use lipo charger, you should get one off Hobbyking.com- The chargers are quite cheap and tend to work quite well and are quite easy to use. You mentioned that you wanted AC, which is a good choice because you dont have to go and find a suitable power supply.
Two chargers looked appropriate from the AC chargers section.
1: Imax B6-AC
2: Hobbyking B6 AC/DC
The Imax is very popular would be a better charger as it can monitor voltage and cycle batteries. However the Hobbyking charger would be an easy way to just plug in and charge your batteries. They both charge at 5 amps max so you can charge most batteries quite fast. If you are setting the current set it at the same amount of amps as your battery has, for example: a 2000mah receiver pack would be charged at 2.0 amps and a 4000mah rc car pack would be charged at 4.0 amps. Some say you can charge batteries at a faster rate than this but to prolong the life of your battery I would stick to this rule.
I would also get an Imax multi plug adaptor box so you can easily plug in most batteries even if they have different connectors. Also get a Hobbyking Cell checker with low voltage alarm so you can easily check the voltage of your packs.
Good luck,
Aston177

Thanks for the advice and for keeping it simple for me, really appreciate it

If you are thinking of an 1/8 scale electric, which typically use a 4S lipo (or more in some cases), be sure to get enough power. At least 100 watts of charger power, 200+ is better.

The B6 chargers mentioned are 50 watt maximum and will be limited to around 3 amps on a 4S, which is very slow, up to a couple hours to charge typical 1/8 lipos. This is a very common issue, we frequently get threads asking why the charger won't go past 3 amps when set higher.

Good point Dave. I haven't had experience with anything over 2s, so the thought didn't cross my mind that Fizzy would want to charge anything over 2s (should have read the other comments:lol: )
Fizzy, what scale of electric car do you plan to buy? Then I can work out the cell count of the lipos you will use and recommend an appropriate charger.

The orion touch screen chargers come with their own internal power supply so you just have to plug them in. They're affordable and compact, might be a good starting point.

The electric car will more than likely be something along the lines of a dex410 for instance or similar so 1/10 scale but I was thinking if I'm going to outlay cash for one I'd prefer to do it once and do it right so I'm not sure if it's best to go after something that will be capable if we decide to go to 8scale would this be ok? Thanks again for the help it's all a bit confusing at the moment.

Ok so I've been reading and joining in on another thread about this which is just above or below this post titled -chargers what's the diff?- ( I should prob just be concentrating on one thread) so I should be looking at the watts the charger puts out/ charges at which will dictate the amps it will put out/charge the batt at according to battery size and at what speed it will charge? so , is this a major drawing point when choosing, so we are not waiting hours for batteries to charge? So they will all charge it's just a matter of how fast and how many?

Hi Fizzy
I was just having a look at chargers outside of Hobbyking on Amain and Tower Hobbies. Although they look good they sell for about $100-$200 which is over double the price of the Hobbyking chargers. At the moment I think your options are:
1: Get one of the mentioned Hobbyking chargers (one of which has been on backorder for a while in the international warehouse)
2: Get a DC charger and powersupply from Hobbyking
3: Look at another store like your Local Hobby shop

Thanks,
Aston177

I just purchased the IMAX B6 from ebay for $40 I had a look on hobbyking and they were on back order so just went through ebay I guess for that price it's no big deal and I'll get use out of it regardless so if I happen to need something more advanced in the future it's no big thing at least I'll have a little more knowledge on it all by then so thank you all for the help and advice
Fizzy

Hi Fizzy
I typed up the previous reply, went to do something else, then posted it after you posted the one at 10.28AM (my time). Good luck with the Imax charger, a lot of people use it and it should be good for charging 4s at 5 amps if you need to I think. If you need any more help just post on this thread again and I will try my best to answer:lol:

Aston177

This is incorrect. Charging a 4S pack at 5 amps to full voltage requires 84 Watts of charger power. The B6 is listed as a 50 Watt maximum charger.

4.2V/cell x 4 cells x 5 Amps = 84 Watts.

This is a very common question, members wondering why a 50W charger won't do more than about 3 Amps on a 4S pack.

My cheapo charger just crapped out...so I'm looking for advice as well. Found this on amain.com and have seen it mentioned on some forums. Thoughts? I have a couple 2s/25c/4200 lipos and will be picking up a couple more and possibly a 3s in the future so I'd like to buy one and be done. This looks to have some flexibility?

http://www.amain.com/venom-pro-2-ac-...harger/p258934