No it pretty much swells up like a hot balloon after every flight. It only started doing that recently though. I've been using it for a few months. As for the voltage, I don't have anything that can read the volts per cell. Yes I am using the stock pinion gear. I tried using other smaller ones, but they just ended up tearing up my main gear because the mesh wasn't quite right. I suppose going down one or two teeth below the stock pinion wouln't cause much of an issue though.