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Thunder Dragon Resoration 9 years 9 months ago #29189

... would still love to hear from ANYONE that is actually running Li-Po with their vintage Tamiya and can share their experiences? (and also the kit that they are using?)...


Can't help but feel I've already posted all of this, but here goes:

:)


Thanks JonnyR - these have been a good read - I was actually thinking more of people that were buying Li-Po kit off the shelf, rather than constructing their own and inserting them into old Tamiya cases!

Given what I've been reading of Li-Po of late, the clear message to me is:

1 - Don't adapt or bugger around with them

... and I won't! Hats off to you that you're making your own in the old Tamiya retro cases though - very much admire your ability and spirit.

All I'm hoping to hear is from people running vintage Tamiya, with pretty much stock radio gear, and simply upgrading to stock Li-Po and popping it in and running with it. I'm assuming all is well, but I'd love to hear all the same. I can see that you're seeing a small series of performance and time upgrades, which seems about right given that they're 2000mah. Stands well for what a 5000mah pack should hopefully deliver!

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Thunder Dragon Resoration 9 years 9 months ago #29190

Have you ever done a controlled discharge of your NiCds to see how much juice is actually in them?


Nope - no idea how you do that.

I've been trusting my Turnigy Accucel 6 charger to accurately tell me what's going into the battery and trusting that I'm getting a good charge into it as a result.

After all, with most of these Ni-Cd cells, the charger would initially stop after a few minutes, with only 50 - 150 mah having gone in, or, after some recharging cycles, gradually bigger numbers being reported. Cycling each of these batteries with a LRP discharge unit and then re-charging has cycled these packs round to getting largely (in most cases) in or around the stated capacity of the Ni-Cd cell.

So, for example, in the packs I've got lying around that have been recently charged and in reasonably active use:

1850mah - 1346 mah charged (still some way to go)
1850mah - 1621 mah charged (not too bad)
2000mah - 1890 mah charged (pretty decent)
1700mah - 1044 mah charged (still some way to go - you get the drift)

Tamiya 1200SC - 1135 mah charged
Tamiya 1200SC - 982 mah charged
Tamiya 1400SP - 1529 mah charged

What I've found is that when you use them, if you use them hard and fully drain them from buggy use, and then finish them off with a battery discharger to completely drain them afterwards prior to the re-charge, they are all steadily increasing with their reported capacity on the re-charge from the Turnigy charger. I assume, that as more juice is going into the battery, it should in theory be being "conditioned" over time, and performing better as a result. The numbers seem to suggest this in any case. All of them are being reasonably slowly charged at 0.5A - each charge takes approx 3-4 hours.



There's no science to it all, no measurements or anything like that - simply relying on what the battery charger is reporting as does it's job.

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Thunder Dragon Resoration 9 years 9 months ago #29191

Okay, 0.5A is hardly a trickle so that would not account for a whole lot of charging loss apart from heat build up.
Meaning the capacity charged should be about 10-20% less than the reading.
Quite sure your setup should be advanced enough to have a discharge function where you can measure the remaining capacity and average voltage. This should give a good idea of the state they're really in.
Sounds like they're getting better though, getting rid of the memory effect...

A silvercan can draw about 7A maximum current. Ten minutes of this would amount to about 700mAh plus loss.
I can only imagine that being the case for the smaller 1200 pack.

You were looking for Lipo stories of course, can't help you there since I'm a fan of my late generation NiCd packs.
The only NiMH I have is a 5Ah LRP. This has always had more juice in it than the length of the driving session (with any motor).

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