I can't say I dove into LiPo, more like tripped & fell into the pool. I was down to one NiMH pack and said "when this one goes south, I'll go LiPo." So that was last night's financial episode at the races when I showed up with one battery that refused to take a charge.
So twenty minutes and $150 on the credit card later I'm the proud owner of a Track Power 4900mAh, Deans lead, and one of those LiPo-proof bags. As luck would have it the guy I was pitting across from had an extra charger, so he ran it up to a full charge and I raced on it all night.
Now I need to ask some questions, because until now all my stuff's been really old-school simple & I really don't know much about using and maintaining LiPo packs:
1. I need a new charger/chargers. For the longest time I've used a couple of DuraTrax IntelliPeak AC/DC Pulse chargers, $55 a pop, and they're plug-and-go. Just a button, a knob to set amperage, and 4 LED lights that go on to tell you what charge mode it's in. All but brainless operation, and I'd like to keep it that way. I really don't need anything like an ICE or a Turbo35 or a Pulsar, what I need is something I can set the amperage, plug the battery in, push a button, and it charges the pack. Bonus points for AC/DC and if it has a balance lead.
2. If the charger doesn't have a balance lead, are there stand-alone LiPo balancers available? And how often should my LiPo pack be balanced?
3. I've heard LiPos don't trail off like nickel packs do as they discharge, they run at full power until they go empty and then just dump. I've also heard you do NOT want to take them past this point, but short of buying one of those LiPo cutoff modules or a new ESC does a LiPo pack give any kind of warning before it dumps (ex: all of a sudden you've got no top-end speed, etc.) and if so about how long can you keep driving without damaging the pack once you notice that warning?
4. I live in Wisconsin and race indoor electric in the winter, so how resilient are LiPo packs to very cold temperatures? I know whenever I would try driving one of my trucks in the cold with a NiMH the pack would drive almost as if it was in the process of dumping, but it would run like that for the full 5 or 6 minutes I'd normally get out of it. Warm it back up and it's just fine. But with the level of care people take with LiPos, would there be any real harm in leaving my LiPo pack with my toolbox in the back of my 1:1 truck while I'm at work?
5. As far as electric goes, I race weekly offroad during the winter and on-and-off in the summer with my TC dirt late model. I always had a plan for my NiCd and NiMH packs when they weren't going to be run for, like, a month or more. Is there anything I should do before I shelf my LiPo pack for awhile? During the week between races in the winter?
6. I would think they've been around long enough for someone to know; assuming it's taken care of what's the typical life span of a LiPo before they go bad for good? And is there a way to tell, like how one dead cell in a NiMH pack would get noticeably hotter than the other 5 during a charge?
7. For a pack like this, a 3 cell 4900mAh, what's a "safe" amperage to charge it at? I'm racing Stock Truck so I don't need to do anything like the crazy 10 amp charges guys were blowing up NiMHs with.