Just a post of frustration...
When are the older generation guys who run the races going to open up to the brushless 13.5 in stock and Lipos in modified??? It might be acceptable some places but this really needs to catch on, it is part of new technology which is a move forward...
One argument to the 13.5 in stock - it is suppose to be an entry class and cost minimizing but brushed motors do cost more in the long run with lathes, brushes etc...a great analogy is in supercross they race 2 strokes and 4 strokes together, the racer has a choice on what he prefers
To Lipos being dangerous, yes if handled incorrectly any battery will be, shorting out a charged NiMH could shoot a cell into a wall(i've seen pics) or a fire in the pits
Also to Lipos - some say the volts are higher, well, a lower turned motor will have the same affect, too much power won't always do it, but the ease of a Lipo and just recharging instead of all the time needed for proper care of a NiMH just makes sense
Just trying to get some points out there to get this moving, if i'm not heard at least the effort has been made....Feel free to add to this :)

Just a post of frustration...
When are the older generation guys who run the races going to open up to the brushless 13.5 in stock and Lipos in modified??? It might be acceptable some places but this really needs to catch on, it is part of new technology which is a move forward...
One argument to the 13.5 in stock - it is suppose to be an entry class and cost minimizing but brushed motors do cost more in the long run with lathes, brushes etc...a great analogy is in supercross they race 2 strokes and 4 strokes together, the racer has a choice on what he prefers
To Lipos being dangerous, yes if handled incorrectly any battery will be, shorting out a charged NiMH could shoot a cell into a wall(i've seen pics) or a fire in the pits
Also to Lipos - some say the volts are higher, well, a lower turned motor will have the same affect, too much power won't always do it, but the ease of a Lipo and just recharging instead of all the time needed for proper care of a NiMH just makes sense
Just trying to get some points out there to get this moving, if i'm not heard at least the effort has been made....Feel free to add to this :)


Its not because of the new technology, some guys just like working on brushed motors.

The lipo batteries are getting better in time as far as higher discharge rates (C).
The lipo batteries have a lot lower IR then Nimh batteries will ever have.

Soon the lipo batteries will take over and Nimh batteries will go like the Ncad batteries.

I say in a few years new lipo-poly???
You just never know...

i hear you on that they like working on the brushed motors, that's fine, but they shouldn't restrict it to only brushed, let the racer choose

brandonizer here is some reading for you: http://www.hobbytalk.com/bbs1/showthread.php?t=174150http://www.rc-oval.com/lipobatteries.html

brandonizr,

The answer is easy...if you see/like a certain type of racing and you believe in it 100% then maybe YOU should create the NEWEST Racing Organization and set forth the rules..

Then you just have to get people to come and run it.

thanks for the links McLin, good reading

Originally Posted by brandonizr
Just a post of frustration...
When are the older generation guys who run the races going to open up to the brushless 13.5 in stock and Lipos in modified??? It might be acceptable some places but this really needs to catch on, it is part of new technology which is a move forward...
One argument to the 13.5 in stock - it is suppose to be an entry class and cost minimizing but brushed motors do cost more in the long run with lathes, brushes etc...a great analogy is in supercross they race 2 strokes and 4 strokes together, the racer has a choice on what he prefers
To Lipos being dangerous, yes if handled incorrectly any battery will be, shorting out a charged NiMH could shoot a cell into a wall(i've seen pics) or a fire in the pits
Also to Lipos - some say the volts are higher, well, a lower turned motor will have the same affect, too much power won't always do it, but the ease of a Lipo and just recharging instead of all the time needed for proper care of a NiMH just makes sense
Just trying to get some points out there to get this moving, if i'm not heard at least the effort has been made....Feel free to add to this

I LIKE IT... I HAVE BEEN SAYING THE SAME THING FOR THIS SEASON. THE OLD GUYS ARE THE ONES THAT GET THERE BATTERIES FOR FREE.

LI-PO IS THE BEST AND THE EASY WAY TO GET NEW GUYS INTO RACING. THE COST IS SO MUCH LOWER IN THE LONG RUN. AND BRUSHLESS IS THE BEST ALSO. I WISH I HAD THE CHANCE TO GO ALL LI-PO AND BRUSHLESS I WOULD HAVE ALOT MORE MONEY.

I KNOW. 1500.00 IN CHARGERS AND 600.00 IN DISCHARGERS PLUS 600.00 OR MORE FOR BATTERIES AND 1200.00 FOR MOTORS. THATS JUST FOR BATTERIES AND MOTORS. I RUN 3 CLASSES.

ONE BATTERY ONE MOTOR. CHARGE THE BATTERY AT HOME. TAKE A CAR CONTROLLER AND TIRE GOOP AND GO RACE. WOW WOULD THAT BE EASY.

I WENT RACING LAST WEEK. RAN 3 CLASSES. I CHARGED BATTERIES FOR 6 HOURS AND I RAN 3 CLASSES FOR A TOTAL OF 36 MIN. OF RACING. NOW THAT IS WAY TO MUCH WORK TO RACE.

Let's see; Gary McAllister, swtour and me.....are some of the "old guys" that are leading the charge for the Lipo / Brushless movement. So it’s not ALL the old guys that are stuck on brushed motors LOL

Everything you guys are saying is true (except for the charge at home thing, they do run better right off the charger) and the time for making the change over at local tracks is now. Most of the organizations will not make a rule change or class restructure until they see an interest in any new deal on a large scale. ARCOR is the only organization so far that can see where this is going and is working on a brushless/lipo class.

Here is a quick breakdown on cost: $150 (or less) for a top of the line charger (must have for LiPo), $90 for ONE Orion 3200 Carbon pack (all the battery you will need). $2.00 for a set of banana plugs from Radio Shack to charge with and your brushless setup. That should hold you for about two YEARS of racing. There is just no comparison in money to brushed and NiMH battery racing.

Now, think about this; a 4300 brushless motor and the Orion LiPo pack is about as cheap as you can possibly get to run a mild modified class “every week” at your local track. That setup is about the same speed as 8 or 9 turn, 4 cell setup……..and did I mention, just ONE battery pack to race all day!

At the present time there is no brushless motor available to get it down to Stock speeds but keep the faith…….it’s on its way! And no I don’t mean the 18.5 motor.

I know for me personally, brushless and Lipo has been the best thing to happen to this hobby. With a family now I don't have all the time I would like to have to enjoy my car. Now instead of tweaking and rebuilding the motors and soldering battery packs and blah blah blah I can just charge and race or charge and bash. Recently I sold off almost all of my Nicd and brushed motor stuff and replaced it with a Mamba setup and Lipos. No regrets!! Unfortunately it's limited my racing options, but I get more time doing what I like - running the crap out of my car.

I heard this week end from a race director that ROAR will insure Lipo's next year. So, things are moving forward there.

Oh, I saw this on FMA direct (http://www.fmadirect.com/)

"All FMA electronic products are designed and produced in FMA facilities or associate firms in the US with minor exceptions. There are no US producers of competitively priced Li Po cells. However, Kokam has been most cooperative in developing cells that have been suggested from FMA. We leave that development to the true Li Po experts and make no claims of having designed or perfected Li Po cells. It is a costly process and Kokam spent over 10$ million US Dollars to perfect the HDR capability that they claim.

The need for high discharge rate actually comes from the power tool industry that purchases about one half billion Ni Cd and Ni MH cells per year. During marketing efforts to power tool manufacturers, the primary requirements are for safety and sanctity of intellectual property. From that, FMA derived the need for "locked -in" safety that had not been present in large Li Po packs that operate "open end" with only external protective devices that are not standardized. It may interest the reader to know that the Portable Power Institute reported that over 1.6 billion Li cells were produced in the past year. About 0.1% of those went to RC users.

Regarding the size of the BalancePro HD connector: a means is described in the manual to reduce the size of the HD connector by removal of the metal housing. When that is done, the connector is just slightly larger than our standard Deans Ultra connector. It is the users choice.

Design at FMA is done with professional input from all levels in the firm from the warehouse to engineering to marketing to management. All are competent modelers. Every product undergoes significant beta test.

Our thanks to Mr Jim Young for as thorough a review of the system as we have ever seen for any RC product.

Fred Marks, pres.
FMA, Inc."

Interesting.

Hopefully they will package the new motor with their new XBR Sport Esc for a reasonably priced package for the newcomer. NOVAK is really getting behind Oval Racing and Brushless, thanks. Ralf

I am eagerly awaithing a lipo/BL STOCK replacement. But SLOWER than stock 4cell? Spec class?

Patrick,

Probably not quite as slow as spec, but maybe a tad slower than current 4 cell stock.

Mainly because we know once guys figure these things out they will get faster than what and how we do our testing, so we don't want what looks like a good speed to be ruined right off the bat by some of the top guys getting a good setup and making them run as fast as a current 19t.

Some of the hurdles we face are track sizes and gearing. Where an indoor carpet track might only be 97 - 110 ft. run line and the Encino Velodrome closer to 900 ft. it might be very complicated to get a ratio for both types of facilities.

I can envision on a VELODROME this class needing to run about a 15% OVERDRIVE gear ratio..LOL (Meaning the Spur is smaller than the pinion by 15%) ...all joking aside, I'm very excited to see NoVAK taking interest in Oval racing again...and they WILL build what we need I believe. One of the nicest things is that the can, endbell and rotor can ALL be the same...

Ralf,

That would be a cool package for the NEW GUYS coming in.

This will be great!
I was hoping for a 13.5/4 cell type speed. They run this at my bro's track in MO. and it seems to be about 2-3 laps faster than brushed 27T. But I will run the most cost effective speed. I have always been a fan of Novak, customer service is key for me.
Thanks Joe

While the COF class will have certain restrictions in regard to ESC, body, etc., the other two classes will be more open in reagrd to these.

I hope by "more open" you will still just be sticking with Novak for the Speed Controls and motors.

Please stick with the NOVAK equipment, level playing field, and we owe them for what they have done and are doing FOR BRUSHLESS OVAL. It seems all the other brushless mfgs have decided the largest market share is in offroad, touring, and bashing. NOVAK is listening and supplying Oval racing. My .02 Ralf

Personally, I have no interest in Spec type racing but I have been doing this for 20+ years. What we need is a better way for racers to get started and/or continue to race weekly with less expense. This is exactly what this new deal will be.

In my opinion, this is where this change over has to start, at the entry, Spec or Stock level. What I tested is great for what I do and it will catch on by itself as soon as people open their eyes and see how inexpensive it is while still keeping the speed.

As I have said many times in these discussions, brushless and LiPo batteries are our future. Don’t let you or your track be the last to find out how good it is. Support what ARCOR is doing and encourage your track to do the same.

This should help. It has a street price of $179.99 at Tower.

http://www.teamnovak.com/products/brushless/ex_systems/index.html

How is testing on the prototype motor from Novak going?

gezer2u - I'm not sure.......I think I got fired from the testing program. LOL

Scot Petitclerc (2006 SWTour Modified Champion and current record holder at the Encino Velodrome) came up to run with us at our local club race today and to help me do some testing w/ the NOVAK test motor.

After todays test...we found a legitimate replacement motor...for 4300/4 cell and/or 19t 4cell.

We put Scot in our stock class and let him play through the 4 qualifiers and he just kept getting faster and faster.

In the mains we moved him into our mixed 19t/4300 4cell class. Scot was running the UNMARKED TEST MOTOR w/ his Peak / Orion LIPO and YES, it WAS Faster than the 4 cell 4300...AND the 4 cell 19t (ARCOR Legal Mt. Fuji based motor) ALL 3 were SOOO close on Top Speed and the mains DID yield the quickest lap times

NOVAK TEST MOTOR - Fastest Lap 6.235 (Scot Petitclerc)
4cell 19t - Fastest Lap 6.253 (Jamison Bartlett)
4cell - 4300 - Fastest Lap 6.305 (John Miles)

Scots car just kept getting faster and faster every lap, and his quickest lap was turned on lap 44 of 46 laps. Where both the 4 cell cars turned their fastest laps in the first 15 laps.

Good stock lap times were in the 6.56 - 6.71 range today. Track is about 300 ft. (Give or take...I didn't run the wheel on it today) and a little loose.

(Post note: Scot was on a good 47 lap pace, but collected a back marker 2 laps from the end causing him to drop from 6.2 on the 44th lap to 8.21 and 7.16 on the last 2 laps.)

Sound too fast for old farts like me and other newbs, will NOVAK be trying another motor? Good luck, we need something to help keep oval going strong and I Truly bebieve that a brushless/Lipo combo is THE answer. I have jusy got back in (never was great but had FUN racing) and the brushless brought me back. Ralf

JB, was that with the orion 3200 pack?

Good report JB! Sounds like a winner.

TrueRC now has 8000 mah 2S2P packs for $75.

Check it out: http://home.comcast.net/~truerc/custom_pack.htm

Scroll down about 3/4ths way down the page!

Problem with those are they look like the soft packs that fliers are using, a good wreck and the cells are damaged and useless unless you figure someway to pack them in a hard case. Ralf

Easy solution - don't wreck :)

Easy solution - don't wreck :) I'll have to look for you and remember NOT to pit within a hundred feet of you, don't want to catch fire if your uncased lipo explodes! Ralf

Problem with those are they look like the soft packs that fliers are using, a good wreck and the cells are damaged and useless unless you figure someway to pack them in a hard case. Ralf

3 1/2 years in stadium trucks with batteries ejected from the trucks and not one fire and no explosions that is alot of internet gossip and hype from the pro nickel battery crowd that has decieved the entire RC world that li-pos will blow up real easy. That is total garbage!!!!!!!!!!

There is over 50 off road 1/10th scale 2wd Pro Truck Racers in my area that uses 8000 mah 2S li-pos from several different manufacturers with no problems but maybe an occasional over discharge swell up. The class is gaining popularity and is growing very fast with 20 minute mains!!!

I don't want a shell around my li-pos. I want to see if they're is problem with swelling before it is a problem.

Li-pos are safer than NICKEL batteries when handled and charged per the manufacturers instructions. Nickel batteries will explode with no warning and throw hot metal casing like shrapnel from a granade. At least a li-po will give you plenty of warning by swelling up first!

Good luck!

Craps:

ARCOR has approved the Orion/Peak 3200 Carbon Edition Lipo's for the the saftey factor. These batteries are cased and not just shrinkwarpped. These batteries are designed exclusivly for R/C car racing. For this reason, I would highly recommend that tracks allowing lipo's only allow this battery or the Orion/Peak 4800 Platmuim edition, again, a cased battery.

Orion/Peak probably sponsor the ARCOR or is involved with the board in some way just like the way Ernie Provetti with Trinity controls ROAR's decision making not allowing li-pos because Ernie/Trinity does not sell li-pos yet!!!! Politics in RC racing!!! :rolleyes:

Orion/Peak probably sponsor the ARCOR or is involved with the board in some way just like the way Ernie Provetti with Trinity controls ROAR's decision making not allowing li-pos because Ernie/Trinity does not sell li-pos yet!!!! Politics in RC racing!!! :rolleyes:

Craps: "Know of what you speak, before you speak".

It's comments like this that has helped promote the retirement of ARCOR. Feable minded people making statements that they know nothing about. Other's read things like this and think that the poster knows what they are talking about, when in turn they are the least informed. Now some may understand the contex in which I used the term: "lemmings".

Geeze... and you post started out so good. If you had done any reading on here you would have known that the orion case is designed to come apart if the pack starts to swell. It's cool that you have had good luck with your lipos, but to say that ARCOR is in with ORION is ridiculous! My questine to you is, Why doesn't the other lipo companies put their batteries in a hard case? It is nothing more then a safety feature.
Oh, ROAR is allowing lipos in 2008.

Roar is allowing lipos in 2008.........wow.......that's great........do you know what kinda classes there will be......for example will it be strictly brushless/lipos.....such as a 4300/orion 4800 class??? that's really great news......
HOORAYYYYYYYYYY.........

I haven't read it on the website but the owner of the track that we race at in the winter (Stockton (http://www.stocktonrcraceway.com/)) said that he was told by ROAR that they will insure tracks for lipo's in 2008. So, yeehaa!

yesssssssss li-po. i have the 3200 li-po i run it in off road and rug oval cars.

my li-po i charge at home. put in car turn the voltage down to 55% on controller and i run all day long and never charge again till i get home. now a mess around all day watching guys charge and discharge and charge some more. any one that says ni-mh is the battery to use... has batteries gave to them or they are just no brainers. i have beat my li-pos all day long around a dirt track at home. i meen beat it hard. i just recharge them and go again. 45 min at a time. and they are not even down to 7.4 volts after all that running. they will charge to 8.4 volts i have 2 of them and they both charge the same like clock work.
now the guy that races hard core will not like that because they have no advantage.
i have 5000.00 in chargers dischargers matchers. everytime i run a pack i throw at least one battery away. one battery in every pack will go out of resistance and drop voltage like a rock. and a battery matcher has told me the same thing. if you get 2 or 3 runs with out a battery going bad. you have a 4 leaf clover over them.
now take 50.00 to 100.00 a pack and throw it away after 4 runs. now you know why the pros sell the packs after a race. more than likely there is one in each pack that are bad. i do not race ni-mh but just once in a while when i want to go watch batteries charge all day long.

with a brushless motor and li-po batteries. rc racing will be on its way back.

thank you guys for building products to help reduce the cost of racing.

I haven't read it on the website but the owner of the track that we race at in the winter (Stockton (http://www.stocktonrcraceway.com/)) said that he was told by ROAR that they will insure tracks for lipo's in 2008. So, yeehaa! Yes this is GREAT news and I hope the other Organizations will follow suit. BUT they are only going to allow the HARD PACKED Orion packs, which I believe is a GOOD thing for safety. Ralf

Problem with those are they look like the soft packs that fliers are using, a good wreck and the cells are damaged and useless unless you figure someway to pack them in a hard case. Ralf
My T4's battery tray is a fairly "hard case". ;)

Do the fliers put them in hard cases? I'd think that crash durability would be more not less important for planes and helis.

The Kokam-based packs from Orion and Peak are _really_ nice but they don't have the capacity required to run the longer mains Craps is referring to (at least not in a single pack).

FWIW - I've been running a 6000Mah MaxAmps pack for a couple months now and am getting about 20-25 minutes of run time (depending on the track). 15+ minute mains haven't caught on locally yet but I think we're headed in that direction. (crossing fingers)

I don't want to appear dismissive about safety (I am certainly not) but I think some of the safety concerns about modern LiPos described online are a bit overblown. I think it's no different than many other things; understand what you're doing and follow the directions and you'll be fine. Don't and you'll probably have problems.

apenn,

You may be correct with the safety of LIPOs, but in order for them to be accepted I belive we are better to error on the side of caution...

It's really easy to tell people "USE THEM SAFELY" but racers are racers and most of us know guys will do WHATEVER it takes to get an advantage..especially in OVAL racing.

apenn- You are right about your T4 and probably most offroad vehicles have the battery better protected then oval cars and sedans. Both have the battery hanging out in the breeze. And fior Airplanes, I fly RC planes and if you crash you have more "crush zone" and foam padding around the battery. this adds to the safety of your pack. Now a heli is differant thing. I would venture to say that if you crash in a heli at speed, it won't matter what type of case you have. lol
I do agree with the last paragraph all the way. Thanks for your input!

JB- All right!

LIPO MODIFIED 4300

5. BATTERIES: A: Team Orion Carbon Edition 3200mAh LiPo Race Spec Battery or B: PEK43301 Carbon Edition 3200mAh LiPo Race Spec Battery Pack. ARCOR APPROVED for Sanctioned Lipo events, effective October, 2007


The 3200 Lipo does not have enough capacity to run a 4300 for 5 minutes.
I stated it elsewhere, but will reiterate it here as well, I would like to see the Orion/Peak 4800 Lipo legal for the mod classes.

Waaay back in the day, we raced 6-cell modified with 1700's. And 53oz touring cars (mine included) race 5 minutes with old, tired 3300's all the time.

If you go way back in the days, we ran 8 min. 12th scale stock and mod with 1000mah GE batteries.
Butch

Not sure abou the 1000mah cells but I do recall the good ol 1200cells. The red 1200SCRs rocked back in the day!! lol....

LARCGuy: The 3200's work just fine with the 4300 motor and all of ARCOR's classes are 4 minutes. Plenty of run time.

You're right, the four minute race length's that ARCOR uses should be fine with the 3200 lipo. However, my initial post about the 3200 lipo not having enough capacity for the 4300 was based on the racing that I do and have available to me here on the left coast.

Some tracks are very battery friendly and others are not. All the tracks/series that I go to run five minute heats & mains. With 4 cell 4200's, I will have anywhere from 30 to 120 seconds of runtime left depending on how battery friendly the track is. Using esc's with lipo cutoff's, which should probably be mandatory (When racers run down their packs now, they just lose some runtime. Imagine the racer that just wants to finish his race and turns his lipo into a big paper weight), I just don't think the 3200 will be enough. I could be very wrong and I'd love to see a 4300/lipo mod class. Hopefully Joe from the SWT will let us do some controlled testing this year before all the rules are set in place.

Wow... we run 3200's with the 4300 B/L in a touring car with foam tires and have plenty of run time.... I cant believe a pan car wont go 5 mins :confused:
The 3200 actually has a little more run time than a NiMh 4200.... dont ask me why cause I dont know :)

Heres a quote from Orion on a diff thread
"The 3200 Li-Po's will give you the same runtime as that of a 4200mAh NIMH matched pack."

Scott,

I've have one 3200 already, and have ordered 2 more that should be here mid week.

Not sure if I'll make mothers day at BCRaceway or not...and I don't know if Raf would let us play with them or not...but I'd like to see them in action on the carpet.

As far as the run time - you sound like you've hung around with the SPONSORED MODIFIED GUYS too long.

What you need to know is - HOW MUCH CAPACITY do I have...and How do I gear to use 100% of that capacity in the time required to finish the race.

When I started racing Sports Mod we had to use 1400's where the Ex. Mod guys were using 1700's. We took our gearing very serious to get 100% out of our batteries, yet finish....this only allowed an average pull of 23 amps from a 6 cell 1400...that's all they had...(The 1700's at that time were closer to 30 amps. With the current 4200's we have what 450+ seconds at 35 amps, which would mean to dump them in 4 minutes you'd have to pull an average of 65-70 amps.)

We had a lot of guys running 'factory team' set ups but they were getting their gearing from guys running the better batteries...and when they listened to the advice they got from those guys....they ALWAYS dumped.

FAST cars are fun, but FAST cars don't always make for the best racing. LIPO/4300 for 4 minutes is as fast as EXPERT MODIFIED 4 cell. I'm hoping if we stay with the 3200's for 5 minutes they will be a tick slower. I'm also hoping that if there are enough guys wanting the speeds of the EXPERT MODIFIED guys..maybe we can reinact the EXPERT CLASS and either run only 4 minutes w/ the 3200s or allow the 4800 sealed pack....either way (3200/4 minute would be first choice to only have to worry about one battery type)

I do think for most of our guys..lipo 4300 will still be too fast, and most will want to run a bit slower...even if they won't admit it....

How much runtime & speed you have isn't just a matter of milli-Amp hours, it's a matter of how much total ENERGY is in the battery. (That's why the power company charges you by killowatt-hours, not amps or amp-hours.) A 4-cell 4200 NiMh has 4.2 amp-hours x 4.8 Volts = 20.16 Watt-Hours. A 2-cell 3200mAh LiPo has 3.2 amp-hours x 7.4 Volts = 23.68 Watt-Hours. The 3200 LiPo actually has more energy in it at the start of the race, and should actually be able to run faster or longer once you figure out the gearing.

Back when the 4-cell "movement" was first taking over here in Michigan (I think 3000's were the battery of the day), we ran 4-cell modified for the first time on a large carpet oval. Almost everybody (including sponsored guys and a multi-time national champion) dumped before the 4-minute mark, running mostly 7-turn motors. I think I qualified 2nd, running noticibly slower (but not dumping) with a 9-turn motor (lowest turn I could find on short notice). They eventually figured out the gearing and most finished in the main. At next month's race, the sponsored guys weren't there, and we ran 6-cell 19 turn. Us "amateurs" ran more laps than 4-cell mod the previous month, and nobody dumped. The same sort of math applies to this (long) story. It's easier to make runtime with more volts & less motor, without giving up any speed.

Personally if you want the most safety you want a lipo battery that has more runtime than any guy can use. You said it yourself that people will do whatever they can. One of the biggest problems with lipos comes from over discharge. If you only allowed 4800-5000 Hard cased lipos then you can use orion or trackpowers. You talk about saftey then do something to ensure it. A 4 min race with 4800 battery gives you a margin of safety. I think you have more of a chance with an issues using the lower capacisty pack.

That is my opinion anyway.

nicholcgn

To a degree, I agree with the more power than you can use idea....except, knowing R/C Oval racers..they WILL USE IT...if they have to overgear 20 teeth to dump ALL the energy they have....THEY WILL and then they'll complain they can't go an additional minute because they don't have enough battery....as far as over dumping, as long as we are required to use a lipo cutoff, you will have to deal with the voltage and run time you have...but I much prefer the price of the $80.00 battery vs. the $140.00 battery.

I've been so impressed w/ the 3200's I've already bought 3 of them...and I hope to get one more in the next few weeks, but I'm not in a hurry. (Then I'll be able to charge ALL 4 at home...and not even have to charge at the track.)