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If someone has been using electric RC car models for some time it isessential for him to know how to take care of the batteries. They arethe power generators for these racing models. A little attention andhandling gives them better life span and more power. It is essential tounderstand how to charge, discharge and take care of them.
It is often assumed that doubling the battery pack would make the cargo faster or give more battery life. Actually, in case of RC Cars, this isnot the case. The added weight will neither add speed nor life to thebattery. Also wiring them in series would just increase the voltage butwould not affect the capacity. Only some of the monster trucks aredesigned to run with 14.4 volts, the rest are designed to run on 7.2volts only with two packs wired in parallel.
Common confusion also prevails between the heavy duty and alkalinebatteries. The user often does not know which of them are better andsupposes that although heavy-duty are cheaper, that alkaline lastlonger. Actually “heavy duty” are also alkaline batteries. It is just thatif any battery is allowed to sit for some span of time, you would beconsidered lucky to derive anything out them after that. Manufacturersuse the term heavy duty to denote their bargain brand batteries. Theyalso have premium brand batteries. The difference in cost is generallydue to difference in cost in producing standard alkaline or oxy-alkalinecells. Other than this the manufacturers also change their premiumbattery names frequently in which case the actual difference lies onlyin tweaking the oxy-alkaline formula a little bit.
Usually most of the alkaline batteries give similar performance and lifespan regardless of the brand. Other than that usage pattern alsodetermines the battery performance and life span. Different usagepatterns in different models give varied response from the batteries. Ifyou are using an advanced controller to control your car then usingalkaline batteries is preferable. If a simple controller is used, thancarbon batteries are sufficient.
NiCad and NiMH batteries are the commonly used batteries for RCmodels. NiCad is usually the one that give more value for money whileNiMH give more capacity that means longer run times. NiMH batteriesare good to charge at 5 amp for racing conditions. Charging them athigher amp would result in higher acceleration but the battery wouldflatten out at the end of the race. For NiCad batteries 5 amp balancesbest between top speed and punch.
For storage, the best option for NiCad is to discharge them to .9 voltsand then store them. For example 7.2 volt batteries should bedischarged to 5.4 volts and then stored. If these have not been usedfor more than a week then it is good to charge them for up to 1 minuteand then use them. For NiMH batteries, thirty percent of the chargeshould be put into the pack and then stored. Dead batteries should bemaintenance zapped once and then cycled on the bench a couple oftimes. If the same is done every alternate day it can help the deadbatteries get some charge.
Batteries are the moving power of an electric RC car. If proper care istaken they give out maximum power and better run times.
1/10th Nitro
