Whatever happened to maxamps cut throat pricing?
 

Is it just more or do the prices at maxamps seem awful high these days. Where is everyone buying batteries these days?

Look here or on tower etc. Neu packs are great bang for the buck. Flightpowers are also very good as well... Zippy batteries are the best bang for the buck, but lack the quaility of enerland cell based packs. The zippy packs are a large step above of maxamps, but still can't quite compare with better brands when it comes to construction etc.

For the reason that the Zippy's can come appart is the reason that I went w/a custom batt. tray made by Mike to just fit those specific batteries.. There is no movement when the batts. are in the truck, extremely snug and so far, knock on wood no probs.!

All my batteries have custom trays made by Mike....It does help keep the cells nice and tight

Not all zippys are well soldered. The flightmax 4000mAh 2s hardcase packs have horrible soldering that will open circuit on anything above 60A. The packs are rated for 100A tho. I don't doubt the cells are 100A cells, but the extremely poor soldering bring them down a lot. Just an fyi. Other zippys don't seem this poorly soldered.

I do remember reading about that. Thise packs are less than 30 bucks though... Good price, even if you have to pop them open and check them out.

MA pricing has went through the roof! I was on their site last week doing some price comparrisons between them and Neu. For the MA 5250 packs, 1x 2s and 1x3s it would cost $300. Neu4900xp 6s pack is $189 and then send it to linc and have him seperate it and save aprox $75 and have better cells or go with the 4300xp v5, a 3s + 2s setup will cost $168 and the packs will take a 5C charge! At that price you can almost get 2 sets of Neu 4300 packs for the cost of one set of MA packs!

i will most likely allways buy maxamps packs, just for the warrenty they offer.

Dude! That's ONE POWER HUNGRY Revo you have there! :yes:

His car broke down. He had to tow it home! :lol:

Lincpimp Please empty your mailbox.
I got dibs on the FP

Uh ohh, I'm assuming those were 8k packs...I've got 2 2s 8k packs that I just E-Mailed them about, too bad I hadn't run across this forum BEFORE buying $400 worth of junk lipos.

As for Zippy vs. Maxamps, after owning 4 Maxamps packs and 1 Zippy I'm convinced that Zippy is the way to go if you aren't made of money. Sure they have a few problems here and there but for the price you get a good lipo. People try to compare them to Enerland lipos too often, they're half the price of an Enerland and the performance is good enough for what you pay. Mine held it's balance much better than any MA pack I've ever owned and ran cooler while providing good power and it was my own fault that it got messed up--I have no reason not to buy them again.

Is there any truth to the rumors that the zippy packs are causing esc's to fail?

I imagine if you gear stupidly high you could get the voltage to drop low enough to get some ripple current, but I ran mine with a Neu 1515 1.5D in a heavy Truggy with 40 series wheels/tires and my MGM handled it just fine but I keep my gearing so that my entire system runs stable.

I actually had good luck with there CS and a cell that was bad in a 2s 8k pack. I did notice on the MA packs that the difference in cell voltage after being discharged was much greater than any of my packs I own now.

I now own a SPC 2s 5000mah 15c pack, a Polyquest 2s 5000mah 30c pack, and a Poly R/C 3s 5000mah 30c pack. Here is where I bought my Poly R/C pack from. Great price and free shipping. This place deals with only Enerland.

http://www.rclipos.com/

i have a feeling a combination of poor setup and general mfg tolerances are causing the failures, not a specific lipo brand... lipos are all made with the same basic tech, so packs that perform the same will yeild the same results. the fact that the first rtr 8th scale bl setup is having issues is related to the people who are buying them, not the actual equipment. i can imagine that most here that buy one will not have issues, no matter what lipos they run...

i have used all kinds of lipos and have found the weak ones will get way out of balance or puff. all of the maxamps packs i have run have not achieved their specs, so they are overrated, and thus vay overpriced. maxamps will not provide discharge graphs either.

their cell quality may have improved, but i still think there are batter products on the market for comparable prices. i expect the entire enerland 25c lipo line to come down in price alot as the various 40c cells become more common.

I rate Max Amps packs in a Brushless truck below that of a Venom Nimh 1800mah stick pack.

..not even fit to use as a desk weight.

The packs in question where 6000mah 20/40C. I had 4 packs, 2 pairs. The first pair that I bought I ordered with the hard shell shrunk wrap in and no warranty, this pair I never had a problem with. Second set I ordered when they ran a special to get the free warranty, this set went way out of balance! Over 0.5 volts out of balance, it took almost 8 hours to get the pack balanced!

I hear ya on the balancing. I had a 2s 6k and it took 2 hours or so on the balancer before I could even start charging (I balance during the charge as well). My 3s 6k will not stay balanced, and the #2 cell is getting weak because of it and by now has probably dropped below 3v. If I don't get an E-Mail back from Maxamps tomorrow about my warranty I'll try calling them, if they blow me off when I call them I will be very upset.

Time to see how well their cells can stand up to some REAL punishment :diablo:
http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r...45_mm_NATO.jpg

If I ever get a cell that far out of balance, I would probably rig up something to charge the low cell(s) individually at something like 1.5A. Still slow, but far faster than balancing at ~300mA.

I have done this with a balancer harness pigtail and some alligator clips.

I did buy this charger recently: http://www.hobbycity.com/hobbycity/s...Charge_Capable

It charges each cell separately. Max output is about 1.8amps (on the 2 amp setting) and it charges to 4.16v. Perfect for getting a mixture of cells balanced out when building an oddball pack, or balancing out a pack with big voltage differences. For the price it is great, highly recommended.

For anyone still doubting the Battery Guru - lincpimp, or any other member who's had issues with MA products or "service"
please know we are only here to further enjoyment of the hobby.

I had my own run in with a pack being held hostage by MA for over 3 weeks as well, and I was dealing with Alex, who is supposedly much fairer about returns and such. I ended up paying more to get that pack replaced. I would never EVER consider buying anything other than adapters from them.

Warranty? How about putting your $ into a product that will likely never need warranty support!

MA covers up their inferiority with an advertising budget that might put P*psi to shame.

Here is my recommendation- it doesn't matter what you buy as long as it's NOT MA.

They will keep churning out garbage and charging YOU for the advertising- I call that predatory and misleading at best.

You've been warned!

Imagine the business they (MA) would have if they had Enerland cells in there packs. With all the marketing they have.

Then they would have to raise their prices even more to cover the increased cost of the cells. Oh wait... maybe they wouldn't because they wouldn't have to spend so much money honoring their "warranty"!

Imagine the inflated ratings and the cost... The only reason they can do all of the advertising is the stupid low prices they pay for the lipos... I would rather not pay for ads and buy something that has the performance i am looking for. I will not buy anything from MA, everything they sell is overpriced.

I totally agree. Why buy basically a generic celled pack when you can get a Enerland based pack for cheaper.

To support the MA marketing budget. :whistle:

Nah, I'll pass. Thanks for the suggestion though. LOL

It seems like it would be smart business for them to have a line of high quality packs to go with their entry level packs with desent prices of course too.

I bought a group of 5-6 MA packs all with waranties. Every single pack had problems before 1 year had passed. What a pain!

If their new line of lipos were better and if they lowered the price a bit, I'd consider going back to them because their lipos are sized very nicely but until they put out a good lipo for an acceptable price I'm done with them.

lincpimp wrote: "I do not think their business model is one to copy, that is for sure"

The Ouroboros is what comes to mind, the snake that eats its own tail.

It seems most of their customer service involves trolling the RC forums and attacking whomever questions the quality of their packs. This includes OEMs too.

I noticed a post by PdC from CC kinda blaming some MA packs for early MMM failures last year. MA jumped on his ass and he backed off. Now they won't suggest MA packs may cause failures, but they will call out zippies a bit. Mostly I think its a crock of S, and Linc summed it up well.

Get good packs from Mike and tear it up, or go cheap w/ zips and be more careful and prepare for some problems (I have 1 weak cell in 10 on my zips.)

MA does have a really good business model tho. Not a particularly ethical one, but a successful one. I think if we've learned anything in this country/world in the last year, you don't have to be particularly good to make a lot of money.

That's a great point Finnster- there isn't as much money to be made by business with a modicum of morality.

And it's always been that way it seems- I wonder, if MA starts to go under, will they get a stimulus package because they hedged themselves out.... ok I'm done :whip:

A customer at the LHS today proceeded to ask me if we carried Maxamps... I said "No, we don't" and proceeded to bite my tongue a bit because he seemed so set on buying some Maxamps packs of capacity greater than the 5200mah we sell.

On Saturday a guy I talk with/advise a lot (he does a bunch of 1/8 conversions) brought his SH buggy into the store, and guess which battery it was holding: Maxamps 3s 8000mah... I held my tongue then too. Unfortunately I have no data (personally) to back up claims of the true inferiority of MA which is why I don't let these (:cough: ignorant :cough:) people know the truth.

Funny thing, I have dealt with MA before, but this was 2+ years ago, well before their marketing increase (and Jason...).

First up was a Maxamps 3s 4200mah 12C pack that I ran in a 1/8 buggy with a Feigao 8L and MGM Comrpo 12012, about 3 years ago (my first Lipo). As you can imagine I was pushing this battery hard and eventually it puffed.

Second was 4s 6300mah saddle style (2x 2s) about 2 years ago. This was 4s3p of 2100mah 15C cells. One parallel group puffed a couple cells, and I was talking with Austin and asked that he replace the whole pack because replacing only 3 cells would lead to an imbalance in the pack, to which he agreed. After I received the battery back from MA I was shocked to see that only the 3 cells had been replaced and discontinued use of that battery. Over the years I have used those cells for various things like transmitter batteries.

Third, also about 2 years ago, was a 4s 5000mah (pre-copper tab) battery. This one had pretty good performance but would get hot. Let's just say this battery had a cell that started leaking and that pack has resided in an ammo can for the last 1.5+ years. Didn't even bother with replacement on that one.

For the guy running 3s 8000mah in his buggy, it actually works out because the local track is an indoor 1/10 offroad (small-ish).

My first Maxamps lipo was a 2s 6k lipo, I puffed that in a 3 pound ERustler with a Mamba Max 5700 combo. 2nd Maxamps lipo was a 3s 6k lipo which never held a balance very well and the 2nd cell eventually died on me. 3rd and 4th were 2s 8k lipos and I actually got the warranty for them...I just sent them in yesterday to get replaced. I imagine they'll come up with an excuse to make me at fault for their lipos failing and try to make me pay for the replacements but I'm not having any bit of that.

My first and my last MA lipo experience was with two 3s 8k packs, about 2 years ago exact. Not sure what C rating are them, I guess 15 to 20C. Both puffed after 10-15 charge cycles of them, other puffed a bit more. That time I used them in my old style emaxx, one pack at the time. Setup was bk6xl 12020 esc. Temps were quite good, didn't gear it too fast..

The one which puffed more I think was my fault drove the car in -20C temperature. But I had quite good insulation in it.

Funniest part is that I still have those lipos in my aluminium case :mdr: charge them from time to time. Dunno what to do with them though..

I'm slowly replacing my MA packs: two 2s2p 8Ah packs and two 2s 5Ah packs. Both have never puffed or anything, but I combined the 5Ah packs into one 4s 5Ah pack to use in my Slash (figured the higher voltage/lower current will be easier on them).

The 4s 5Ah pack works well in the Slash with a 2200 kv motor, geared conservatively.

But the 8Ah packs left me very disappointed. I attempted to take them apart to reconfigure into single 4s1p 4Ah packs (for the Slash). I say "attempted" because the tabs were already showing signs of tearing they are so thin. Might as well call the tabs "foil". And there was no solder connecting the 2p cells; I was able to seperate them by hand with no soldering or anything. I decided they weren't worth the effort and will just toss them. I plan to show my son first-hand the possible dangers of abusing lipos by taking the raw cells outside and puncturing them. Might overcharge a couple too. Sometimes kids need to see these things in person before they respect what can happen if things aren't treated right. But, when I took one cell outside and puctured it, it just got somewhat lukewarm, so there goes that lesson. lol, the packs aren't even good enough for an object lesson!

Can you imagine taking apart a 5s pack made out of 2p maxamps cells... That is 10 cells to separate, 20 tabs to tin, and a bunch of "lets be careful and not damage the paper thin tabs"... Then you have to attach the main leads, and tape them so that the tape takes the load when you let the pack hang off the wires. And you have to attach the balancer harness... And then tape it all up well and shrink it...

For the time it would take me to do that at my hourly rate, it would be cheaper to junk them lol.