Post week #2

I received the 3 4200 mAh batteries I bought off the rctech.net forums on Saturday - they were certainly very used, hence the $10 each price tag! I set out to reconfigured the packs to be saddle packs and get them cycled to see how they rate. They were exactly as pictured, and I ranked and labelled them on appearance alone before charging them : A, B & C.

As I had guessed, B was better than C, but A acted extemely unusual. It peak charged at 9.75v with an average discharge voltage of 6.67v - other than runtime of 574, this was worse than my 2000 mAh's. I spent an evening cycling each cell individually and found cell #5 to be bad - it would charge up completely showing a peak voltage pretty high, but would then on the discharge side would drop out after a few seconds. I'll probably pick up a cell or two just so I can make a decent practice pack out of it.

I didn't get much else done during the week - I had planned to cut the motor and put new brushes in it, but that never happened. Luckily I did find out that the battery hold down was broken, and got the holders out of there so I could run tape through to hold the batteries down instead.

I also spent a bit of time with a set of calipers measuring the rear arms of the car to see what could be a match - the TC5 rear arms look pretty similar and have about the same length, so I'm hoping they'll be a match.