Originally Posted by
Quante
I'm asking myself why nobody has looked into the A123cells as a new battery for 1/12th. 2S gives you 6.6V and they can be charged in 15 minutes.
Atm I'm designing a 12th car using those cells as I dont care much for a 1S lipo pack.
I love the A123 cells in the picture below I have a 2S2P pack of the 1100 mah A123 cells. These are the same size as current nimh cells and I have another pack that is split to fit my t-bar cars. These will make a full 8min run with a 17.5 but I've never tried then with a super stock or mod motor so I'm not sure on those. These weigh about the same as the 1s lipo but have the punch and zip of the nimh, plus thay only cost $7 a cell.
Originally Posted by
JoshM20
A few guys talk about doing it on the thread The future of 1/12th scale... or something like that. Some have done it, I thought about it. Seems like you can do it in a T-Bar chassis, so it appeals me.
See above description and pic below
Originally Posted by
Scottrik
Doing a car to satisfy your own curiosity, etc, is probably great but designing one at this point to race competitively (and dream of any sort of commercial success) is going to be like pissing into a hurricane. At this point it appears the decision has been made and 1s LiPo is it.
As far as the A123 batteries, I confess to not knowing a TON about them but for starters even 6.6v (nominal) is way too much. 4-cell / 17.5 (and 1s / 13.5 is VERY similar speed) is really too fast for 1/12 beginners and there's no motor available that would see a 6.6v car running even THAT comparatively slowly. Even a 21.5 would be faster.
Also (and this may have changed) it seems that anybody I'd seen trying A123 cells ended their test description with "if we shortened the race time" because capacity was pretty severely limited. That is decidedly opposite the trend right now since for 2009 all 1/10 classes have INCREASED race time to six minutes. I'm not interested at ALL in decreasing 1/12 race time--8 minutes it's been and 8 minutes it should remain. As it is, we were barely taking 2000-2200mah out of 1s packs running 10.5 at Denver in March so I'd say 20+ minute races running 17.5 could be feasible. Maybe not practical, but feasible...
But the sub-c type A123 cells fit like nimh, have the same 4.8v and solve all the t-bar issues that 1s lipo does'nt. And I can make 8mins no problem and thats with aggressive gearing of 76/54
