How important is this. We were having a discussion at the local track last night and some people say they do it every charge, others say they rarely do it and some say they never do it?

depends on what cell batteries and how far you are discharging them.
We mostly run 2 cell and no one runs them completely dead or even near lipo cut off so they never come out of balance. I went most of the summer with out balance charging any of my 2 cells. I checked the voltage and they were all still with in .002 volts. If your a guy that constantly runs the packs to 3.0 volts per cell I would balance it every couple charges.

depends on what cell batteries and how far you are discharging them.
We mostly run 2 cell and no one runs them completely dead or even near lipo cut off so they never come out of balance. I went most of the summer with out balance charging any of my 2 cells. I checked the voltage and they were all still with in .002 volts. If your a guy that constantly runs the packs to 3.0 volts per cell I would balance it every couple charges.

myself I run 2 cell batteries, but never come near running them dead. I just do it every few charges, it was just a discussion at our track after the races last night.

I charge my cells with the balancer every time only so I dont have to unplug it from the car and I think balancing your battery every time is like matching cells after every race

DSmith you will be fine, I think what sbardy#0 is trying to say is by balance charging them everytime the pack will get the exact voltage into each cell and have a little more mah. He is correct, in my case we run 13.5 Truck class with 5000 mah Lipos. Last race we My Son and I used 700-800 mah from a 5000 mah packs. The cells voltage was the same and I only charges the packs every 2 races :) Lipos do not lose there punch until they fall below 3.0 volts per cell. (The danger zone). If you are running a really hot motor and a aggressive driver than you should be balancing them more often because the cells are running closer to 3.0v.

Thanks for the replies.

I balence charge any time I can and its practical.

Regular charging seems to go a little faster and my balence leads are much shorter than my charge leads so If I leave the battery in the car on race day I just regular charge it.

When I get home and pull the batteries I balence charge. You can go 10 runs before balencing usually.

If a battery has a hard run, or was discharged alot I go straight to balence charging.

i balence every time i charged the battery. not matter how hard or soft i run race day or just in the yard playing around. i all so slow charge my lipos by 2 amps less then what most ppl here go for 5000mah lipos seems to last longer as well with the way i run.

From what I have been told and from what I have read.. Balancing every time you charge is not necessary. But you should balance them once in a while just to keep them as close as possible. If getting every bit of performance out of your pack is important to you, Then balance every time you charge. I balance every time I charge..