John Stranahan

iTrader: (27)

Kcobra-Here is a pic of the Apogee magnum fire. It is described in detail on the Pantoura Thread. Briefly, I took this pack off the Scorpion charger and placed it on the Astroflight charger to finish up. The astroflight misread the number of cells and started charging for a 3 cell pack. In much less than a minute it had puffed up. I got the batt out of the car put it on the concrete slab covered it with a towel and I lanced it with the X-acto to make it safe. Their video showed a guy drilling it after all and then holding it in his hand. In 10-15 seconds it blew with a huge noise, large mushroom cloud and plenty of red flames. Not as much as the Max Amp flames. Had Apogees video battery blown like mine he would definitely be changing his pants. Maybe his was not charged much.
Now I have got a picture like this for every brand of LiPo that I have tried extensively. I have seen overcharge test results that show even safe brands spewing some fire on overcharge. It is not really the fire that will change with brands just the size of the fire.
Previous to this Max Amps pack blowing there was always a charging mistake or bad procedure involved. You can consider changing chargers before the battery is full as a bad procedure for this type of battery.

It might be a good time for me to stick those Li Ion NanoPhosphate batteries in the TC. We have added a shortcut to our track to run some 1/18 scale stuff. It might work good for that shortened track. Running it light does not seem to be particularly helpful on my long track. It is not really hooked up that well (note this problem was fixed with a better setup later on). I had similar problems running stock pan cars light. If I had more traction it would be hooked up well. The TC is still not well suited to the long track even with 1 years more worth of development on the motors and speed controls. Same problem of blowing up arms or overheating. Take your pick.
These nano phosphate batteries are not as finicky about over and under charge and will not burst into flames from what I have read. I predict that they would be a good equivalent to 5 cell on a TC sized track. I plan to order some tomorrow from Horizon and run them in the TC5 on the short course. This course still has a fairly long straight by TC standards.

I will still run the Pan Car with LiPos on the full track as it is quite enjoyable.
I have a lot of high tech stuff in shambles at this point, though. X11 is blowed up. Novak GTB is melted, AmpMax is burned up. A Titanium gear servo is having a really hard time although it works quite well. I broke the ears off in a horrific 50 mph crash. Replaced the case. Now it has the lead wires burned off. The Spektrum receiver looks like a chocolate bar shape and color.

I agree to improve your charging procedures just a bit to save your stuff. This took hundreds and hundreds of runs before I destroyed some stuff other than the batts, but it seems like it might be inevitable.
John