Dialed_In

Do you use hard case or soft case lipo batteries? Which do you prefer to use and why?

For my particular application I will getting 2s lipos for my Slash. I believe it has decent battery protection so I assume that a hard case lipo isn't necessary. I probably won't be racing so I won't need to adhere to track rules. Someone has also pointed out that with a soft case lipo you can see if it puffs.

I thought this may make a good discussion as I have yet to make my mind up and I'm sure it should help others in the same situation.

Also, please take a moment to state or discuss your choice.

crushgear64

i like hard case as you dont have to worry about rocks getting into the battery tray. get a 2s 4000mah zippy lipo and a traxxas plug and ull be set.

john01374

I typically use soft cases for 2 reasons. Fisrt is because of size. I just got a couple of 2S 3000 soft packs that fit in the old tamiya cars that have the oval battery slot. second reason is cost. They are about $10 cheaper. That being said I do have a couple of cars that need hard case lipos due to the battery position. My boomerag and hotshot both hang the battery under the car where it's exposed to rocks etc. I use hard cases for these cars. My slashs, pedes. rustys etc all use soft packs because they're protected. One word of warning. If you're planning any major bashing like skate park kind of stuff. Make sure your soft pack has foam around the front and back. I smashed in the front of one of my soft packs on a bad landing. Lesson learned.

Access

Personally I prefer the bare batteries, soft case for safety / reliability reasons. Hard case you never know what is inside, you could be running a dangerously puffed / damaged battery and not even know it. A properly mounted and protected soft case is the best, I'm very picky about reliability and I want my stuff to work day in and day out. Hard case would also be more easily used by scammers to counterfeit or sell inferior product since again the customer cannot really check the cells inside.

ekimusman2

I agree with what he said word for word.
soft cases.

cenracer1

soft case lipos.. I've used them in my Helicopters and have no issues with them.. They fit fine in my Rustler and Ducati Bike... besides, I like the added bonus of being able to see the condition of the battery without having to guess if there is an issue...

overrev

I use hardcase for safety reason/bad crashes. You can tell if a sell is puffing.

Dialed_In

Thanks for the input so far everyone. You bring up good points that I hadn't considered.

How can you tell if a cell in a hard case lipo puffs?

Access

Maybe he has x-ray vision...

FoamyVictim

Hard cased lipos are a liability, plain and simple. If you can't tell that your pack is puffing, then it may just burst into flames, taking your car with it. Even if a track said they stuck to ROAR rules and demand a hard case, I'd contest it for this very reason. Hard Packs are more dangerous than soft packs. I've lawn darted my soft pack powered 8th scales plenty of times to know they are well protected. A properly engineered battery tray offers more than enough protection to race with it.

Pathous

My Feedback: (12)

I have seen hard case lipos puff they split the case seams. I use hard case lipos in my b3 and t3 they fit tight in the battery tray with little movement. My D4 also gets a hard case lipo because there is very little battery tray for it.

BuzzBomber

My Feedback: (4)

What kind of hard case packs are you people dealing with? The Pro-match packs I have utilize a snap-on case which can be popped apart to inspect the cells. If cell pressure were to build up and puff, it would pop the case apart anyway - it's not as if these are welded shut! I've been dealing with lipos for six years now, so I'm well aware of the risks. I do also have a couple cheap soft packs I use in my cars (all my plane/heli packs are soft case/shrinkwrap), but it makes me cringe every time I run the cars and a rock chip or piece of twig gets jammed in between the battery and the tray (yes, it does happen, and sometimes dents the cell).

overrev

Hard case batteries are made with to halves if they puff the case expands. You don't need a xray machine if you have eyes and a brain.

FoamyVictim

I get a FAR earlier warning than a hard case. They get a little squishy when they're on the way out. But the hard cased folks would never know that. They'll just keep right on using them until they either:

A: Fail, burst into flames taking your car/charger/whatever else is nearby with it

OR

B: It's too late to get a replacement on race day(assuming you're smart and order the MUCH cheaper packs from overseas) or you get ripped off buying one from your LHS

Pick one. Soft packs are a Wise and cheaper route, plain and simple.

Now if you're a basher, and commonly send your "RC whatever" hurdling high into the air at great speed, then by all means, get a hard cased pack. When it puffs, you may or may not notice. Having to order a replacement isn't as relevant, you can just play next week. Might cost you hundreds of $$ though, it would take your car/truck/whatever with it.

Access

Too many myths about hard cases perpetuated in this thread... the main driver behind hard cases being used is ROAR so let's look at the ROAR rulebook and see what it says (openly) about them, or at least the ones that you are supposed to used for ROAR-approved racing.

From rule 8.3.2.2 from the ROAR rules, PDF on their website.

Therefore, internal deformation of the cells will generally not cause the case itself to deform.

To reiterate, "seperation of the case... will destroy the case and/or label and render it unusable in competition".

Again, "any modification the the factory approved hard case... ineligible for participating..."

BuzzBomber

My Feedback: (4)

nevermind. I should know better by now.

Chris_RC

The question is, would you really trust a $30 lipo in a $750 car? I really dont care if you or your friends havent had a lipo puff, a cheap battery is more likely to puff than a more expensive battery with better quality cells. Have I heard of horror stories about cheap Zippy's puffing? Yes. Have I heard horror stories about orion or other high quality hardcase packs puffing? No.

FoamyVictim

I do it all the time, have several, and other local racers have them too. So unless you have personal experience with the cheap packs destroying cars...

P.S. If you want to spend $300+ on a battery that you can get online for less than $80, knock yourself out.

monsterbombs

soft case. cheap,powerful and safe providing you follow the rules. any
lipo will fail if you ecceed the boundaries with it. i bought two 3s lipo (2450mah) 30c
softcases (about $70). i run them in a vxl/mamba setup without reliability or heat issues. ever.
now i decided to be silly and hook up a 6900kv mamba motor. needless to say she
went boom boom. i went to the lhs and the batteries there were simmilar in weight
to a small dog. [X(] nearly $300 and if you do something stupid it will let go. like
any battery. my cheap softcases do the samething, for a fifth of the cost in some cases.

just because they are expensive doesnt mean they dont fail. maxamps proved this.
my hong kong batterys do the job and as long as i keep within the parametres i
should get a couple of hundred cycles. for about 30 dollars

oh and i have a hard pack a kong power 4600 2s. it had its day. flew about 200metres
down the road, had a cracked case and lived. that battery is hardcore. the cells could be
puffed or damaged and i wouldnt know. i dont use that much now. oh and that was about $170 [:'(]

Access

It's not the failures you cause through abuse or not paying attention to the spec, it's the ones you don't cause, ie. that just spontaneously 'happen' for no apparent reason, or when no abuse is present.

This is where you have to watch out for the cheap product, but there is no hard and fast rule. Sometimes the expensive guys are selling the same product the cheap guys are, other times they aren't. It's really hard to prove it either way, it's not like with a computer where you can open up your HP system and inspect each of the component parts (ie. this is an ASUS motherboard, an AMD whatever spec microprocessor, so-and-so graphics card, etc.) You can't listen to the propaganda on either side, basically anything that comes out of the mouth of a company, since they have a vested interest in selling their own products (critical thinking).

So it really just becomes a delicate guessing game here. Battery market has been like that for 20+ years, essentially the 'wild west' where companies can say anything they want and verification of claims made is hard to impossible. In the days of NIMH you had pulse charging, burp charging, 'zapping', etc. 'Zapping' was one of my favorities, a controversial process that no seller would discuss openly for fear of 'letting their secrets out'. Scientifically non-verifiable, but all insisted it worked, as in 'trust us'. As consumers our best bet is to rely on common sense, some simple tests we can run (performance is easy to verify, but reliability is not) and word of mouth for failures. We can also analyze trends, ie. maxamps prices used to be reasonable but increased 50% 2-3 years ago, at a time when nearly all other manufacturers' prices have gone down. It's real easy to spot a 'bad' brand, the hard part is knowing which brands are truly 'good'.

BuzzBomber

My Feedback: (4)

I'm not going to debate the merits of hard or soft packs anymore since I've made it clear I use both and the subject is as useless as arguing politics anyway, but I will point out that those roar rules quoted above DO NOT seem to bear out the reality. I currently have 4 "ROAR legal" lipo packs in my rotation. I just checked when I got home to make sure I wasn't going crazy, and NONE of them have the required sticker across the seam. Yes, they were ALL sold as roar approved and are on the list of approved packs. Neither do the Thunder Powers I just looked over at the local shop. As I recalled and verified tonight, the case on my packs will separate under mild pressure evenly applied (the case halves are double sided taped to the cells and the case seams overlap), so that it appears a puffed cell would easily expand the hardcase and give warning. I think I know why the sticker across the seam is not present. Take it for what it's worth.

Access

"ROAR will have a grandfather clause until Jan 2009 for all approved cells at
competition on the Label rule"

Buzzbomber there was a grandfather clause on older batteries from before the sticker requirement was out. If you tried to race in a ROAR race today, the sticker would be required.

Poppable cases that you can seperate on your own would seem like a good solution, since it overcomes the basic problems that hard cases have otherwise. But that's not at all what ROAR intended, nor are they going to be ROAR legal if you read the rules.

www.roarracing.com is their site and anyone can read the rules for themselves to verify what I said.

Chris_RC

Your $30 Zippy wont give the performance as the same C battery from say Orion, SMC, Thunder Power, Checkpoint or Reedy. Their batteries are more expensive because-
more r&d
better customer support
US brands
and they sponsor their drivers

It isnt like they are only paying $15 for the lipo and pocketing $100.

And I dont care about MaxAmps, they are the exception to the rule. Go by an actual manafacter, not a company that is based (and still operates) in a 2 car garage like MaxAmps.

BuzzBomber

My Feedback: (4)

Yes, the grandfather clause makes sense for the packs I bought last year, but doesn't explain the two freshly manufactured ones I bought in April '09. FWIW, the packs I bought this year(same manufacturer, Pro-Match) still lack the sticker on the seam even though they are listed as roar approved - but the cases seem to be more securely affixed to one another than last year's batch. Again, I'm not arguing, just presenting some observations. I will state that the main reason I bought these packs was that my track requires roar approved hardcase lipos, and these were recommended by one of the club committee. I agree with you that the "poppable" case seems like a good solution combining impact resistance with ease of inspection. The sticker seems like a bad idea for the seams, more about arbitrary standards than safety. Since there aren't any ROAR officials showing up at my track to tech my batteries which I bought from their then-current list, I'm not going to worry about the sticker that didn't come with mine.

ekimusman2

i have ten or so total soft lipo packs and want to bash with them. what should i pad the battery trays on my savage flux with to make sure they don't shake?