So early last week my wife decided we were going to go to Branson for the weekend. She wanted to fish with her son,our son and his friend. I don't care about fishing so I decided it would be a good time to play with an r/c,something I haven't done for a LONG time. Being short notice my only option was to break in this new Pink edition Slash that has been just sitting all boxed up in the garage.
Since it has been so long since running anything,I figured my LiPos would all be dead so I ordered a new one off of Amazon with free 2-day delivery so I would get it in time. I never looked at it,just threw it in my tool bag and loaded it up along side the Slash box. We headed down to Branson Friday after everyone was home from work and school. After we settled in at our hotel, I dug everything out and started getting it ready to play the next morning.
At this point I noticed 2 problems. One, in my haste I ordered a battery with a deans plug and Two, I brought the wrong charger. I had my old Triton charger that only charges LiPos at 2.5A . I had an adapter so I still charged the battery. I thought I had an adapter to hook it to the Slash but it wasn't in the bag of stuff I brought with me. There is a hobby shop in Hollister just a couple miles from Branson so I figured I would go there Saturday morning and pick up an adapter.
aturday morning at the Hobby shop I was met with more issues. No,they did not have an adapter! He said he would solder one up for me for $15 plus parts for a total of $25 or put a Traxxas plug on my battery for $20. Probably most of you guys would just have bit the bullet and done it but I couldn't do it. I didn't want to spend the money for something I can do for free at home. So back to the hotel empty handed.
I brought my LiPo fire bag that I store them all in so I took out the 3 other batteries I have. The first one was completely dead,no voltage and the charger would not even recognize it was hooked up. The second seemed promising, I hooked it up and it said it had 7.95 volts so hit the charge button. After 2 hours it was at 8.39 but the charger never could declare it full and shut off so I just pulled it off and tried it out. Seemed to work while testing it inside so I went to the parking lot to play. The truck ran about 12 feet and shut off. The low voltage cut-off was triggered on the Slash. So much for that battery.
I had one more chance,my old gensacearespammers 5000mAh. I hooked it to the charger and it said on 5.1 volts. I hit charge anyway and the charger started charging at .1 amp. After 2-3 minutes it declared the battery bad/too low of voltage. I noticed however that it now said 5.2v on the battery. So I tried again. Same thing happened but voltage went up again to 5.3. So I kept repeating this until finally the battery reached the minimum for charging then it the charger took off and started charging the battery. Maybe I brought the right charger after all. My other charger would just declare it too low right away instead of the low amperage charging for a couple of minutes. I crossed my fingers let charge. Took a nap too!! LOL!!
A couple of hours later I heard the charger play it's little jingle and it said "battery full". It was getting dark but I wanted to play. Success at last!! The battery seemed to perform about as good as new. I ripped it around the parking lot and basketball court. There was a small hill where I could catch air and some gravel for donuts. Wish I could have video'd it for you but it was too dark for my phone which isn't very good anyway(also why the pics aren't so good). I got a good 20-30 minutes of fun though.
It charged back up fine so Sunday morning while they went fishing at Scotty's Trout dock, I took the truck for another spin. I was going to find out what would look good and video some for you but....... Wasn't really doing anything rough,some donuts in the gravel and small dirt pile to jump off of but only got about 5 minutes of run time and then it broke a drive yoke.
That's how my weekend went. At least I finally got to play a little.
Since it has been so long since running anything,I figured my LiPos would all be dead so I ordered a new one off of Amazon with free 2-day delivery so I would get it in time. I never looked at it,just threw it in my tool bag and loaded it up along side the Slash box. We headed down to Branson Friday after everyone was home from work and school. After we settled in at our hotel, I dug everything out and started getting it ready to play the next morning.
At this point I noticed 2 problems. One, in my haste I ordered a battery with a deans plug and Two, I brought the wrong charger. I had my old Triton charger that only charges LiPos at 2.5A . I had an adapter so I still charged the battery. I thought I had an adapter to hook it to the Slash but it wasn't in the bag of stuff I brought with me. There is a hobby shop in Hollister just a couple miles from Branson so I figured I would go there Saturday morning and pick up an adapter.
aturday morning at the Hobby shop I was met with more issues. No,they did not have an adapter! He said he would solder one up for me for $15 plus parts for a total of $25 or put a Traxxas plug on my battery for $20. Probably most of you guys would just have bit the bullet and done it but I couldn't do it. I didn't want to spend the money for something I can do for free at home. So back to the hotel empty handed.
I brought my LiPo fire bag that I store them all in so I took out the 3 other batteries I have. The first one was completely dead,no voltage and the charger would not even recognize it was hooked up. The second seemed promising, I hooked it up and it said it had 7.95 volts so hit the charge button. After 2 hours it was at 8.39 but the charger never could declare it full and shut off so I just pulled it off and tried it out. Seemed to work while testing it inside so I went to the parking lot to play. The truck ran about 12 feet and shut off. The low voltage cut-off was triggered on the Slash. So much for that battery.
I had one more chance,my old gensacearespammers 5000mAh. I hooked it to the charger and it said on 5.1 volts. I hit charge anyway and the charger started charging at .1 amp. After 2-3 minutes it declared the battery bad/too low of voltage. I noticed however that it now said 5.2v on the battery. So I tried again. Same thing happened but voltage went up again to 5.3. So I kept repeating this until finally the battery reached the minimum for charging then it the charger took off and started charging the battery. Maybe I brought the right charger after all. My other charger would just declare it too low right away instead of the low amperage charging for a couple of minutes. I crossed my fingers let charge. Took a nap too!! LOL!!
A couple of hours later I heard the charger play it's little jingle and it said "battery full". It was getting dark but I wanted to play. Success at last!! The battery seemed to perform about as good as new. I ripped it around the parking lot and basketball court. There was a small hill where I could catch air and some gravel for donuts. Wish I could have video'd it for you but it was too dark for my phone which isn't very good anyway(also why the pics aren't so good). I got a good 20-30 minutes of fun though.
It charged back up fine so Sunday morning while they went fishing at Scotty's Trout dock, I took the truck for another spin. I was going to find out what would look good and video some for you but....... Wasn't really doing anything rough,some donuts in the gravel and small dirt pile to jump off of but only got about 5 minutes of run time and then it broke a drive yoke.
That's how my weekend went. At least I finally got to play a little.
