balancing problems
 

I just recieved a zippy compact 4000mha 8s 29.6v lipo from Hobby King. When the battery arrived I noticed that it had two seperate balance leads coming from the battery. All my other lipos have only one balance lead. I could not balance charge this battery with the charger that I have so I bought an ICharge Adapter Board from a place in the US called EP Buddy. Now this adapter board is supposed to accomedate the type of battery that I have since the board has two 4s ports on it. First I plugged in one lead from the lipo to one of the 4s ports on the board, then as I was connecting the second lead into the board...bang...it shorted frying the red wire on the battery lead and melted the pin ( red wire ) in the adapter board. It would seem that I connected them the wrong way but that is impossible since the lead can only plug in one way. There is no way you can reverse the plug. Maybe I didn't connect them properly, I'm not sure what I did wrong. Now the red wire on the balance lead is burned and I am afraid to charge the battery without balancing it. Can these leads be repaired? Can I still use the battery in this condition? It's a waste of a good battery, not to mention what I paid for it. I'm new to electrics but I have sucessfully converted three of my other plane over to battery power, but this one has me stumped. Please, can somebody help?

RE: balancing problems
 

Does this help at all? http://www.scriptasylum.com/rc_speed/lipo.html concentrating on the balance wiring diagrams. It's hard to see just what happened without seeing the equipment , but I'm gonna guess first that you had the two balance plugs reversed. The left one was in the right slot and vise-versa. In any case it can be repaired and as long as the cells are in balance then it can be used that way. I doubt there's other damage beyond the balance tap wires , and it may even be burned off inside the pack.

RE: balancing problems
 

left seat, I did the same thing when I started out charging series packs. Whatever battery pack plugs into the negative lead on the charger MUST plug into the negative lead on the balance board.

Looking at a pic on Hobbyking's website, it doesn't look like they make it too clear which balance lead has to go to the negative side :( that's the price of going with the chinese brands, but the good side is you can blow up 5 out of 6 packs and still come out ahead.

There is a good chance you damaged the balance board in addition to the balance tap on the battery. I've done that more than once.

There is a steep/expensive learning curve to electric, especially with the bigger electrics. I started e-power with 10S and went through all this, including making a mistake that caused 2 chargers to blow up when I was charging 4x 5S packs.