Puffed Cell in 2S and 3S 3400 Zippy K ???
 

Here's a post that I made over at the Hobby City customer community:

"I've made two orders from hobby city and would order again. The first order I got 2 3S 4300 Zippy K Lipoly's and the I max B8 charger. The second order I got 2 2S 4300 Zippy K Lipoly's and some other odds and ends. The first order was May 11, 2008 and the second July 16, 2008. I immediately put a deans connector on one of the 3S Lipoly's and charged it with the Imax-B8 and proceeded to use it in my rustler.

Fast forward to today.

Last week I put deans on the other 3S and the two 2S packs. I charged up the 2 2S packs and one of the cells wouldn't balance out. Best I could get was 4.20 and 4.06 on the one pack the other got 4.20 and 4.20 verified by a multi-meter. I ran the 2 2S packs in parallel for 4S in my rustler and the bad cell went dead. 0.34v

Now to my question, is this my fault for letting them sit two long? I kept and eye on the voltage and they bother were ~85% charged while just sitting. Are they under type of warranty?

One of the cells in the 3S pack that I did use puffed while sitting unused for a month or so. That was also stored at ~85% charge. Why did my cells puff? Why wouldn't my balance charger balance the bad pack? The pack was brand new.

-Brian"

Did I kill these cells becasue of letting them sit unused: The date bought and used are both above. Can someone explain to me why a cell being .1 doff of another cell in that pack it is such a problem? thanks

-Brian

Simple case of DOA. You need to contact Hobbycity about it directly, rather than posting questions in the feedback/review section under the product.

Thanks for the quick reply, I'll get in contact with them tomorrow.

-Brian

talk to ricky. he is really helpful, i know they should have 30 days warranty *all lipos sold by HC have this* but becuase its out of that time i doubt you will get a replacement EASILY. also, they will want you to send the entire pack back to HK... now this is the stupidest thing ive ever heard of and personally i wouldnt do it. id rather lose $50-100 than kill a plane full of people if something did happen to go wrong...

Sucks, but you get what you pay for. With their packs so cheap, you are going to get a bad one every now and then. For the cost of the packs, it ain't worth the hassle. What do you expect for half price lipos? Customer service?

By the way, I love my zippy packs and yes, I have gotten a bad one before. Just chalk it up as a loss and move on. Buy another and you still haven't spent what it cost to get a name brand pack...

Just saying...

I agree with the you get what you pay for. I am very happy with the use I got out of the 3S pack that I used for a while earlier this year. I look at it as I payed ~$65 including shipping for a 3S 4300mAh pack and easily got ~$65 dollars worth of fun out of it.

My next order from HC I'm going to try some of those rino packs. A couple for my finally completed/ converted e-revo. I'm using a V1 MMM that I bougt from castle right when the preorders went in. So far I've got ~10min on it and no real problems to speak of.

-Brian

It doesnt sound like you did anything wrong. I would look at packs at spc or truerc. You pay a bit more but its under warranty. I have read about a descent number of people with puffed zippys. You should be getting hundreds of charges out of those packs. Even though I agree to chuck it up as a loss I think you should chuck it up as a learning experience that having to send stuff back to HK is not worth it.

[QUOTE=hemiblas;222047] It doesnt sound like you did anything wrong. I would look at packs at spc or truerc. QUOTE]

Where can I buy these packs?

http://www.spcracing.com/index.php
http://home.comcast.net/~truerc/custom/custompack.htm

Check out my FAQs for a link to plenty more good lipo retailers. :)