Originally Posted by Greg Sharpe

Thankfully, this next cheat has seen it's last raceday. Prior to the dawn of NiMH batteries, NiCD batteries were at one point only supplied from Sanyo. Throughout decades of racing and many itterations of cells (from yellow SCRs to tan 2000s), all of the cells had a couple letters stamped on the negative end. The stamp was a date code, used to follow when the cell was produced, which is insignificant in of itself.

Then came the other cells. Some enterprising souls began racing non-standard SubC cells from other sources like power drills and wierd appliances. They would use new shrink wrap from the accepted Sanyo cell of that time period to disguise these "other" cells. The catch was ... there were no date codes stamped on these cells!

Besides being a mild cheat, some of these cells did NOT like being used in competitive R/C environments and subsequently exploded!