Got a choice to make, and need advise
 

My local track finally buckled and is allowing LIPO's in racing, the problem is that the battery they will allow in stadium truck is the orion/peak racing 3200 carbon look batteries. does anyone run these and how would they handle a mamba max 4600 in a stadium truck. I have my 4.4k 4400mah maxamps NIMh and need to know if the 3200 lipo's will be that much better than the 4400 i already have. Also what do you balance them with? I saw three plugs and am wondering if i can adapt a hyperion LBA10 plug to it.
thanks for any advise you can spare

According to the specs, the 3200 is actually a better pack than the 4800. The 3200 is a real 20C pack and is capable of delivering 60A of current. I doubt that the nimh pack can do that without significantly dropping voltage. The 3200 will likely give you more punch with the nimh pack perhaps giving better runtime.

Trakpower has a balancer for their packs. Perhaps it will work with the Orion packs too. As for making an adapter, I don't see why not. I thought that I had seen someone post something about it at rcgroups.

Thanks for the advise, I might look into them then. Can anyone tell me how to wire it to the balancer?

take a look at the link to the speed calculator in the brushless section. When you go to the calculator page, look at the links on the left, there is one to a wiring diagram and it will show you how the balancing taps need to be wired. Of course, your connectors will be different, but the principle is the same.

It's at the bottom of this page. And, if someone has connectors other than the ones on that page, I can add them - I just need to know what the wiring scheme is...

Thanks, but it doesn't show how i need to adapt the hyperion lba10 to an orion 3200 carbon (similar to trackpowers)

crazy, from the pics I've seen of the V-Balancer harness, it appears that the little hole in the center is simply tapped into the joint between the two cells. Now that I think about it, I don't know how you'd adapt the Hyperion balancer. The Hyperion LBA10 uses the balancing harness to monitor the voltage of the cells and to discharge necessary cells to balance the pack, while the charging is actually taking place through the main discharge leads on the battery. It appears from the pics of the V-Balancer harness that the trakpower charging system actually charges through the balancing harness. I don't know. I may be wrong.

On the plus side, the V-balancer seems to be pretty inexpensive.

OK, I just said a whole lot of nothing. Does anyone know for sure?

Oh, you want a "brand-to-brand" adaptor....

Exactly, I got to go to the local plane shop this week anyways, so i'll see if they get their flightpowers from duralite or not, if so, I'll see if they can get a V-balance balancer for trackpowers and see if it will work on orions

Still should be pretty easyas long as you can get the right connectors. Then, it's just a matter of matching up the wires...

OK, I was thinking again. Uh, oh. Anyway, even if the orion pack was designed to be charged through the balancing harness, you could still make a balancing harness for your hyperion balancer. It would take a pack side tap, two 4mm bullet connectors and whatever connector it is that would fit into the center hole. The balancing harness would consist of the red wire on the harness going to a 4mm bullet connector which would plug into the + connection, the second wire with the connector to plug into the center hole and then the last wire with a 4mm bullet connector to plug into the - battery connection. With this setup, you could balance the pack with the hyperion balancer in passive mode and then charge the pack after it's balanced. In my experience with Kokam packs though, I can say that it isn't going to need much balancing. I don't think I've ever seen my Kokam packs need balancing. The cells are always within 0.05v of each other. That's what my charger tells me anyway.

Thats good to know, I was on Orion's site and they said the same thing, that they don't need to be balanced as much as others. Thats the final thing for Lipo's going mainstream, consistency. Would it be ok to run them till i get the proper balancer?

Yup.

I heared some people who said that they've been racing with the trackpowers without balancing them at all and almost with each run, they get the same power and consistency. They already come factory balanced and matched. A balancer would just ease your mind.

He (trackowner)told me i was misled slightly on criteria, turns out he wasn't totally against other LIPO's just inposed a limit on voltage to 2s. So i can run my current 2s 8k lipo's with no troubles:027: . thanks for the info but its not needed now. thanks for the info anyways