R/C Tech Forums - Charger recommendations

Quote:

Originally Posted by Qball41 (Post 14199168)

I'm getting back into RC racing after a bit of a break. I'll be racing exclusively 1 cell on-road. I'd welcome recommendations on battery chargers that would be good from a performance/value stand point.

qball , what are your racing goals what kind of vehicles and what kind of budget there are so many options on the market now it can be easy to knee jerk reaction, you will always get the icharger recommendations but that might not be in budget and if you don't get the right charger for you than you will be disappointed.

first question being do you want to have an a/c-d/c charger or one that is d/c only,
a/c can plug into the wall and no need for an external power supply.
d/c on the other hand means that you have to provide it with 12 to 14 volts minimum direct current that is either in the form of a car battery, which is very cumbersome, or in the form of the power supply which than brings in another complete decision making process.

next is what are you planning to race if planning on 1/10 and only 1 vehicle a single output charger would work well.
however if 1/8th scale or multi vehicles you may want the ability to charge multiple batteries at once.

answer these questions and we can give you several options to look at and we can pick on each others options in the process and hopefully get you a charger you like.

another option to think of is to get a stop gap charger that is the simple a/c d/c charger that will charge at decent rate enouph to run 1 battery at a time that is inexpensive or cheap and use that till you learn a little more about what you want to do and than buy a better quality charger later in the game, nice about a stop gap is that it gets you on the track with less out of pocket cost initially.