So, I bought a load of lovely new Deans plugs with the intention of upgrading my six battery packs, 2 chargers and the esc; that was the plan anyway.
So I chose one of my naff battery packs to start with, just incase, and carefully removed the tamiya connector by cutting each wire individually. I then trimmed back the insulation and tried to tin up the wire- wouldnt work. No matter how much flux I applied the damn wire wouldnt take any solder. So I gave up and tried to tin up the deans plug- wouldnt work either. I ended up melting the plug because I had to hold the soldering iron on the tab so long for the solder to melt. After about 3 attempts I gave in and decided that tamiya connectors are actually cool:007: . I believe the problem was cheap nasty solder and a kack soldering iron- which then decided to break- so I have ordered a new one and some lead free solder.
I then had a poke at my tamiya connector and was very intrigued to find that after removing the plastic plug bit to expose the metal inner connector, it is only crimped on to the wire = this must be why they over heat and melt the plastic parts together. Now, when my replacement tamiya connector arrives (monday), I will tin the battery wire before crimping it to the plug part, and then heat it up so that there is a direct connection between the wire & plug. If I am correct this should improve the current handling of the tamiya plugs and make it 99% as good as a deans- in theory- though the deans does have a slightly larger contact area between the male/female plugs; we shall see.
EDIT: Deans are for sale on ebay=
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...0460&rd=1&rd=1