Success on 6s
 

About a week and halve ago I went to my LHS for a few little things, and one of the car guys there that I've known for a while told me about the 6s flightpower packs they had on special. Apparently who ever they get there batteries from (in Australia) ordered too many of the 6s 4900mah 25C packs which don't usually sell fast, so they got rid of them for cheaper than usual. I got the pack for AUS $300, so around $260 US, plus I didn't have to pay postage :yipi:

I originally bought it with the idea of pulling it apart and making 2 3s packs (I have a maxx) or a 2s and a 3s (that's what I'd been using in the maxx, and buying this 6s pack was cheaper than buying a 3s and 2s separately). Since looking at it I'm not sure if I should or not. Has anyone pulled lipo packs apart and reconfigured them before?
If I decide not to pull it apart I will change the motor mount in my truggy that I'm making to work with a single pack.

Anyway, back to the tittle. I decided to strap it into the maxx even though the balance would be a bit out of wack, and try my luck with the quark 125 and neu 1515 2.5d (1700kv). Well it seems I'm one of the lucky people who's quark runs on 6s, it didn't do anything strange at all.
My gearing for the test was 51/20 with stock diff gears (12.5:1) and some old proline bow tie's which balloon waaay too much at high speed. Wheely bar is important.
I did get a short vid, but I really don't like it (the vid, the car is good). The quality is bad and I didn't get a full speed pass, because the ballooning tires made it hard to put the power down properly. Anyway http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoOlsYrUF5s

very nice, cant beat that deal on flightpowers, did u decide if you are going to change it to 2-3s packs yet?

Not sure yet, I'll wait for some info from someone who's done it before, before I decide.

looks good to me. :)

how much does that weigh?

I have reconfigured a lipo in the past. Not by choice, but I was running a 2s2p and 3s2p 8000 mah packs for 5s total in my revo and I lawn darted a big jump and the gmaxx straps snapped(running them doubled up now). Anyway... long story short, I damaged one cell in each pack but did some very quick field surgery to remove the 1 damaged cell from each pack. When I got them home I was able to reconfigure the 8 remaining cells back into a single 4s2p pack. It was kind of a PITA to figure out what was what. The tabs all looked the same so after disassembling them(very carefully!) I went around with a volt meter and marked all of the tabs with a black or red mark (using a Sharpie) to indicate polarity and then reassembled it using solder and the connector board from the old 3s pack.

When I was doing this I was telling myself that I should take pictures, but didn't bother.

Anyway. Its not to bad if you know what you are doing eclectically. Just be very careful and pay close attention to how you are assembling. One false move shorting a cell will ruin it. If you do it just go very slow and pay attention to what you are doing.

The only thing that I'd worry about is that some manufacturers weld the tabs together. You could damage one of the tabs when taking it apart making it impossible to solder.

I pretty much did the same thing too, except mine was by choice as the 5s was just over the top for the MM. I marked my polarities as well (v important.) If you are making 2P packs, i would suggest making seperate Ps first (ie 1s2p) then putting them in series. Also, I cover all the connections I'm not working on w/ elec tape so I don't accidentally touch a contact and short something.

Lastly, some packs are glued/taped together and are diff to seperate. If you tear the silver bag the lipo is toast. Not sure how much they like to be bent either. I took pix, I looked at them later and they were completely unhlepful. lol

Thanks for the info. If I decide to separate it I'll definitely be careful with the polarities and shorting it out.
I'm not sure how the balancing wires will go, but I'm sure that once it's apart and I can see where they are I'll be able to figure it out, but the main thing I'm worried about is how the tabs are connected together, I've never really seen how they join the cells before.
I don't think these cells are stuck together, because one of the cells slide sideways inside the pack about a mm or 2 and I pushed it back fairly easily, but thanks for the warning.
Would it be a good idea to try to borrow one of those suits they wear when defusing a bomb :wink: Hopefully it won't be needed.:smile:

Oh yeah weight, well we don't have any accurate scales at home, but the ones we do have say it's around 12lb. It's definitely not a light weight maxx, it still has the 2 speed and shift servo. It's heavier than the Gorilla and UE maxx's at racing.