Hi Everyone,

Still putting my B5M together. I have the motor and esc. I am wondering what the pro's and con's are for the various battery connectors.

I personally like the look of bullet connectors because it reduces the amount of wires in the buggy. I am just a little worried about exposed wires (the very tops of the bullets where the wire is soldered in) on most of the images i have seen online.

Since the wires are exposed is there any issues with shorting out the battery or other components? Or is just about making sure the plugs are in the correct polarity? What is the order of plugging them into the battery?

Thanks!

There is no correct order of plugging them into the battery other than obvious polarity one.

I have never had an issue with the wiring itself on the bullet plugs but they do require an good solder job for the wiring to be firmly in place. For racing, those are the way to go and what you'll see on the front-runners' cars.

The obvious issue is that it is very easy to reverse polarity on those. My buggy is setup so that the wiring means the wrong bullet can't even reach the wrong plug, i.e. my positive wire can't reach the negative hole on the battery but if that's not practical for you, I'd recommend marking your battery istelf with tape, nail polish, etc. to "shout" the correct polarity at you.

Also, make sure you get "solid" instead of "birdcage" plugs. You want these, not these.

Or otherwise, Dean's plugs really are not bad for a newbie.

I would actually argue that there is a "better" order for plugging bullets in... positive (red) first, negative (black) second. This reduces the amount of spark you can generate between the terminal and the bullet. If you go negative (black/ground) first, you'll often get a large spark when you go to plug the positive in.

But otherwise bullets are the way to go. Simple, clean, easy to use. Don't worry about the exposed tops, it's never an issue.

Perfect, now just need to pick up a couple battery packs. Is it common to have to preorder the SMC shorty packs? I have been waiting to see them just say available.

Any other good shorty packs for stock buggy around the same price point?

How many battery packs should I have on hand for race night? I am assuming this depends on my charging (hitec x1) speed.

Fast Charge or Balance between mains?

Yes on the preorder and you should do it to ensure you get one out of their next shipment.

Those are the best in that price range, IMO.

A stock buggy will use <1000mah in a race, it'll recharge in about 12 minutes on that charger. I run mod, actually have just that charger, and it never takes more than 17, even in balance mode so I use just one battery and it really never even leaves the car except for cleaning. You don't need to buy more than two packs.

Metalnut - Just tried it playing around with my car and there maybe more variables to what does/does not cause the arcing when plugging in. For example, if the cars' switch is off, I get no spark regardless of the order. If the switch is left on and the car is plugged in that way, I get an arc of about equal level regardless of order. YMMV.

How long does the pre order take? I might just get a cheap as possible from the LHS and then pre-order and wait.

Thanks for the help MarkA and metalnut!

It varies but you can probably e-mail them to ask when they expect the next batch.

Here is what is on there site. I also sent them a message to see how long until they have the 4600's in stock. What do you think about the 4300's?:

The factory we buy our packs from is having issues with IR(internal resistance) on some models. This is creating some backorders and delays before we can get more packs in stock as we must wait until new bathes of cells are ready. Basically packs with higher IR will have lower performance. This may not be noticeable to everyone but we take pride in selling packs with a certain level of performance and we feel it's best not to sell these models until the issue is resolved. The 4670-2S2P shorty pack is one of our most popular models and we have many customers who have these on order or asking when more will be in stock. We had to sell the last shipment 4600s that came in as 4300-50C packs as the IR was higher.

We received a new shipment of 4300-50C from a different factory and the mAh is very good. We're seeing 4600+ on a iCharger when discharged at 10 amps. The IR of this new 4300-50C is a bit lower than the previous batches of 4300-50C but not as low as the good batches of 4600-70C packs. I believe this will make for a very good pack for the price as we're offering it for 29.95

For updates on backorders or info in general you should check out our Facebook page as we do post info as it becomes available.

The 4300 should be more than good enough for a new racer and then it can become your practice pack later on.

That is exactly what i was hoping you would say. Thanks for all the help!

If you want to insulate the top of the bullet connector where the solder joint is a little dab or liquid electrical tape will do that for you. I would say it is not needed unless you are the unlucky sort that might drop a tool across the connectors while the bullets are inserted, but all the same a little dab of the liquid tape is easy to do and does not look bad at all.

I do the same thing. positive first then negative when plugging in the battery and reverse order when unplugging the battery. (negative first then positive)

It's also cleaner that way too...I have a TLR 22 2.0 and there is NOT a whole lot of room underneath the body for much of anything.