Is a battery Pit-stop possible?
 

Ok, removing vehicle and class from the mix, what I'd like to know is if YOU think it's possible for an Electric off-road vehicle to come in for a pit stop and have it's battery or batteries replaced and still be competitive in a Main where the total duration is 20 mins or less.

Once you vote, please post your reasons why...

Thank you.

DM

I voted no but I really want the answer to be different. Right this moment, I feel like even in a case where one battery is used, it simply takes too long to compete against Nitro. Removing the body, unhooking the battery, removing the straps, inserting the new pack, strapping it down, reconnecting, making sure the ESC arms and putting the body back on just takes too long. I'd guess close to 1 minute total time vs a nitro pit which is like 10 seconds or less. If the main is 20 mins, 1 min is an eternity.

I do think it may be possible if batteries had some kind of quick release mechanism. I know there was some talk about it here by some of the wizards on this forum but I'm pessimistic about a home-brew solution. I think some company with a real R&D budget needs to sit down a few engineers to come up with a viable, compatible, quick, light solution.

Currently my thinking is getting a pack or packs large enough to run the entire main is the only way to race competitively against similar nitro vehicles. I hope that changes because high capacity batteries are big and heavy, two things which stand directly opposed to raceworthyness.

DM

A 5000mah lipo should be enough to get you through a 20 minute main, as long as you're motor's not oversized or too high in kv.

I vote yes because anything is possible with some time, money, and creativity.

If you had some kind of drop out battery tray then it’s entirely possible. Of course such a thing would be entirely custom but not too difficult to conceive. Maybe a thick batt box like Mike sells, with an interlocking attachment of some form, that can be quickly un-snapped to allow the tray to pull out the side, or with a little more ingenuity, out the bottom. The actual batt would be secured to the tray and you’d actually be swapping trays in the pit-stop. No need to un-pin and remove the body, simply lift the side. Sounds reasonable?

You will be a 1 or 2 laps ahead of the filed to make a nice pit stop if needed. If I can get 23 minutes out of 6S 2200mAh, you should be able to easily get 30 minutes with 6S 5000mAh. Just go with the right Kv motor.

I looked at the E-Revo very closely today at RCX and it is a very simple, yet great design. The part that will take the longest is disconnecting the old packs... you just press two buttons to open the side of the tray, and then slide the pack right out.

20 Minute main shouldn't require a pit stop for an electric but in a longer main like 45 minutes I'm guessing a min of 2 stops for a nitro, I think an electric could do it with one and you could possibly win, esspecially if ur already in the lead. I know my biggest problem would be keeping the thing on it's wheels though cause my BL E-maxx is constantly flipping over backwards.

If you can get 20 mins non stop racing out of a 4s 5000mah pack in a truggy, then your either going too slow to keep up with a nitro or your track's too small for a truggy IMO. Most guys at my track are lucky if they get 15 mins of good racing out of 2 trakpower packs at similar to nitro speeds.

I voted yes because the Lipo will get alot more runtime then the Nitros, so u need one battery swap compared to there 3 re-fuels.

I am going to go yes as I think a quick swap system for hard pack batteries especially would be very easy to make. It would even disconnect the battery leads for you.

Yes
 

With the technology and skills flowing through this site I would have to say yes to this one. Just off the top of my head I can think of a system like xcentrk said, which the battery is clipped in and would only require a quick 'Press-release" to get the pack out and swap it, and switching the leads. If you practice just like the big boys in NASCAR do, you can probably get er done in quite the competitive time. Where there is a will, there is a way. I am sure with the thinking just going on here today we will see some mechanical marvels in the next several months to a year. YES this is definitely doable.

As for the Mah being used I do think that some guys are just trying to hard to get maxx speed out of their rigs and that is why they are only getting 10 or 15 minutes out of their packs. With some of the raw power being used out there today a lot of guys are spending way too much time spinning their wheels instead of driving smoothly and consistantly. We just love to drive fast and out of control, because no one can get hurt. It is just like the video games that are just not realistic to real world driving. Work on your technique first and back off of the speed.

When guys at my track get 15 minutes from a pack it's when they do drive smooth and consistently, while being geared for basically the same speed as the few nitros we've run with, so they're not way over powered setups.
My 1515 2.5D (1700kv) on 5s, geared for ~32mph (bit less top end than nitros) will usually use 1400-1500mah (out of a 25c 4900) in 5 and half minutes of racing. That's while driving very smooth, with hardly any wheel spin on a not so gripy track. So I'll probably get something like 15-18 minutes racing runtime.
Lots of people say they get huge run times, which I'm sure they do for most types of bashing, but from what I've seen you use power a lot quicker in non stop racing.

I do think it's possibly to make a good quick release battery compartment. It may be quite tricking and time consuming to make a good one, and you might not be able to use the stock dirt guard, but still doable.
I'm pretty sure it was Serum who had some drawings of a quick release tray he was designing a while ago (6 months maybe?). But I can't find the thread, or the temp forum to see if it's in that.
The idea I liked the most was to attach the hold down to the battery with velcro or simillar and plug the battery into the hold down.
Put some big female bullet connectors on the hold down, and some male connectors in the battery compartment, so when you push the battery into place it is automatically plugged in, no need to mess around with deans plugs or whatever. If I was doing it I would try and use that sort of idea.
It will only be worth doing if you can change the battery without taking the body off though.

I appreciate all the enthusiasm and positivity posted thus far. I think however my phrasing of the question was flawed. I don't want to know if it's possible to pit if someone magically comes up with a quick release system, I want to know if it's possible with what's in use today, that is battery (or batteries) held into the chassis often with some complicated maze of velcro (ala the Tekno tray) and wired up to an ESC with one or more plugs, topped off by bodies held in by 3 or 4 body clips.

I'm going to time myself soon and have a real number on the time it takes. Again, it's not a question for a crazy long main 45 mins to 1 hour - because I doubt any electronics can handle running - at race pace - for that long. I just want to be able to finish a 20 min main - with a few warm up laps - with batteries that weigh a reasonable amount.

Pit stops are the real next generation of E-Racing. Running 20-25 mins with two 4s 4500 batteries, with a swap at about 12 mins to keep weight low...that's what I'd like to be able to do.

DM

only way i see this is just like a dwalt drill. pack need a custom battery connection that comes apart when you pull the pack out. maybe even a reciever pack that keeps the esc armed while the battery is removed.

I edited my post after you posted angain MacII.

Are you talking about a Monster Truck? In a buggy/truggy the is usualy only two body clips so you can lift one side of the body up withour removing it (your body might not last as long with the constant bending) then it is just a simple case of removing the battery and re-pluging it in. If you only use one velcro strap and use bannana plugs instead of deans i would have thought you could change the batteries very quickly. You could tape/glue the two bannana plugs together to make the changes even quicker.

If you really wanted and you were using ideally a hard case Lipo you could attach the two female plugs to the side of the Lipo and attache the male plugs to the battery tray so that all you have to do is lift the battery in and out.

I've been racing a E-CRT truggy. I'm about to get some kind of E-Revo, on the fence between the genuine article and the possibility of doing a conversion. My E-CRT has two packs now and the new E-Revo also uses two packs. Can't help but feel like I keep fighting a loosing battle. Either I run with huge and heavy high capacity packs to make 20 mins which diminish the agility of the vehicle or I change mid-race at a massive time penalty.

The new E-Revo might be possible to change packs semi quickly but only if you can get at the packs with the body on, and only if the wires are in the battery boxes. IMO taking the body off/feeding the wires through a hole the the battery box mid race is not possible.

What capacity are your packs, surely a good 5000mAh pack would last 20 minutes?

I've run two 4900 TrakPower's in my E-CRT. Now, I know I'm using a very inefficient motor (one of those mystery XLT-1's from FD) and I am upgrading this year to either true blue Neu motors or the Castle Flavor Neus but as it stands, at the tracks I race, I can get 12 minutes race pace, I've done 15 twice when I was babying it and way off my normal pace. I'm fairly resolved to try using 6000's and hoping for the best.

mac that motor has to go. i had one and when i got the NEU i took the FD and threw it in the trash. i would spend money on a neu before buying more batterys. my opinion

The efficiency of the Neu might add a few extra minutes. I might be wrong, but I get nice run times with my heavy truck running on grass. I know it's not racing. I used the 7XL a couple times in my MBX5T, but now it is much better with a small Mega ACn22/30/2 motor in it.

at the winter nats an electric buggy ran with the nitros in a 45 min main and they did a battery swap pit in under 30 seconds. most nitros pit 7-8 mins, some 9.... at 8 mins average. thats 6 X 7 seconds for a quick pit, so it's pretty close.... I am doing the same thing unless we have enough electrics for our own class

Thoughts.
 

I still think that one could configure a project that would allow some kind of slot design to change batteries without removing the body, and rig the plugs so that you may simply slide the used pack out and slide a fresh one into the tray with the plug lined up perfectly for quick change snap in configuration. Kind of like what was mentioned earlier with the Dwalt powertool batteries or even like some cell phone batteries do. This is a doable thing for sure.