TRUE RC lipo packs?

[jhautz]

Ive been running 5s 8000mah packs from TrueRC for quite while now. I use them in my Maxx and my Revo. For the money they cant be beat IMO. I run some setups that pull well over 100amp peaks and even though they are only 10C(80amp) constant cells, I have never had any isse with them heating up or dropping voltage enough under load that they cause the LVC to be tripped. I recently got an eagle tree, but I havent gotten a chance to graph their performance yet so I cant tell you real world nuimbers. Just that my experience was good enough with them that I now have 3 sets of the 5s (3s pack + 2s pack wired in series) 8000mah packs.

I also have some 5s lipos built with the Enerland cells that are in the flightpower Evo20 packs and in reality there isnt enough of a performace difference for me to notice. Im sure if I graphed the performance of them (and I intend to once it stops being so cold out that I dont even stay out long enough to finish running a whole pack) in the same setup side by side the better cells would show, but in real world performace, I cant really tell.

The oldest pack I have has easily 100+ cycles on it and many of those cycles were pushing them very hard for their rateing. Still going strong. I think the last time I charged them they still took 7900+ mah charge. So they seem to be holding up well.
The only issue I ever had was actually when Mike put them in his emaxx. One of the packs just quit working. no smoke or puffing or anything.... Just quit working. I cut the shrink off of it that night and found that the littleboard that all of the tabs were soldered to cracked somehow. I had to sloder a small battery barr accross the cracked board to fix it and I re-taped and shrink wrapped it and have not had another issue with it since.

One more think: I dont have any data to back this, just observation. I feel like they tend to go slightly out of balance a little more easily than the higher end packs. I dont know if its cuz Im pushing them closer to their limits or what, but it not really a problem. I just balance them every 2 or three charges and Ive never had an isse.

Anyway: Thats my experience with the TruRC packs. Very good bang for the buck!