Uh oh, did I ruin my SMC Lipo's?

[Patrick]

Yeah I try to keep to the 80% rule. Using the entire packs seems to shorten its life a lot, compared to using ~60% at a time.
For most of my use there is only a few minutes difference between 80% and 100%, so for me it's usually not worth running right to the end.

Here is something else to remember.....
If you increase your LVC from 3.0/cell to 3.2/cell it will decrease your runtime (which inturn will reduce the mAh you put back into the cell).
I don't know if a loss of 5-10 minutes runtime is the appropriate runtime loss, but some runtime loss should be expected. Keep running at 3.2 for a several charges and see if it hold steady (runtime as well as mAh replaced). If it hold about steady you should be fine...


But then again my opinions seem to be a bit off lately, so I might be way off base.