Oh #%@!! What did I do to my SMC Lipos?

[redshift]

Hyperion hyperion hyperion hyperion hyperion

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[Unsullied_Spy]

Originally Posted by Freezebyte

Still no reply from SMC

Call them?

Originally Posted by Unsullied_Spy

Call them?

Love to, if work would lay off on me and give me a chance to take care of some personal business for once. Tomorroo might be the day...

[zeropointbug]

Originally Posted by fastbaja5b

Ok thanks, do you find the higher internal resistance of A123 vs Lipo presents an issue?

Absolutely not. What type of issue are you referring to?

[JThiessen]

Originally Posted by fastbaja5b

Ok thanks, do you find the higher internal resistance of A123 vs Lipo presents an issue?

I didn't notice it. I ran them hard, charged them fast, and for the most part, they came back ready for more. I ran into some balancing "challenges" with one battery, but with some TLC, it came back every time.

[zeropointbug]

I never once balanced my packs, lol... I just don't think they need it with RC packs. I charged them at the max I could which was 10amps and is the rated fast charge for them as well.

The low internal resistance may affect the durability of the esc for absorbing back EMF when braking, but I have had no issues.

I am not calling Freeze a beginner, but I think all beginners should use A123 cells, they provide them with plenty of power, durable, and you can't really get into a dangerous situation like could happen with lipo if a VICTIM does something stupid with the pack, that he may or may not have known you could do, or not do.

But IMO, you should get the Hyperion G3 packs, I am continually amazed at what these things do to my truck. And SPEAKING of durability, I just ran a half run with my Revo geared for 65mph running in the ditch/road... I was scared, I am not joking here, every little bit of throttle increase would lift the front of the truck sky high. I didn't even know my little 1512 could pull the truck so hard with such tall gearing! Brought the truck in, I put ~2400mah back into the pack @ 20amps(immediately after the run mind you) and they were stone cold as well!

I am not speaking out of my @$$ here (although like Pimp said earlier would be cool if you could), my Revo can handle that tall gearing only because my Quark esc has been modified quite a bit to handle anything I can throw at it, which as you can see, is alot.

Ok, so I just got off with Brian at SMC a little while ago and needless to say, it was a very enlightening and professional conversation. I started to speak with him in regards to my problem with my SportMax 6000mAh 28C batteries I purchased at the end of April of this year.

I will relay as much of the conversation as I can accurately remember as the conversation went on for nearly 20 minutes. After stating the above info about myself to Brian, the conversation goes:

Brian: Is this Freezebyte?

Me: Yes it is

Brian: Ah ok, now I know who you are, my names Brian of SMC Racing products and I saw your post on the web

Me: Ah ok, I was wanting to call you about this problem with my Lipos as I didn't hear back from you on the email

Brian: Oh? Hmm I didn't get it, what email did you send it to?

Me: Your on you main website contact info, info@smc-racing.com

Brian: Ahh, that actually goes our our president up in Canada whos is pretty busy and it sometimes takes awhile for him to get back to emails. If you wish to contact me directly, my direct email is jacoprod@aol.com. That was the email I sent to you from our past conversation when you had your first initial problem with the Lipos'

Me: Ah yes, I do remember those but I lost them in a recent computer crash and I couldn't remember it

Brian: No worries, so what exactly has been going on?

Me: Well, I think I bit the farm and its pretty much my fault. My lipos from you guys puffed big time when I was running my newly rebuilt Savage Flux on a grassy area testing out the new tires and body

Brian: Right, I remember seeing your pictures and I saw nothing out of the ordinary on you setup and the grass certainly didn't seem that high or thick

Me: That was my impression, but needless to say, now i've got my Lipos damaged that I paid good money for and im still not exactly sure what happened and its fustrating.

Brian: I can definentely understand. Were you running them past the stock LVC from HPI? We personally have never used the castle link on our HPI products, we deam them just fine out of the box and never mess around with the settings and have had hardly any issues with our products in there vehicles.

Me: Yeah, I changed the LVC from 3.1v to 3.3v at random times as I was getting a bunch of different opinions in regards which would be the safest setting. Some people state the LVC is an emergency backup only and shouldn't be used to determine when to stop running the vehicle, only when the speed and power drops drastically is when you want to stop driving.

Brian: Yes and no. Again, we have our Savage Fluxs on stock LVC from the factory and haven't had issues though when know as soon as the truck starts to kick and stop when you hit the throttle, we stop driving it as thats the LVC kicking in.

Me: Yeah, I unfortuantly pushed that envelope a little to far over a month ago and I think thats what caused my first little Lipo puffing in the first place and from recent info from peeps on the web, apparently if you have the LVC set to low, like 3.2v or lower, it tends to spike below that at times and causes slight damaged to the Lipo and over time, it gets worse and worse and the battery fails.

Brian: Well, very possible and yeah, pushing the Lipos past the saftey voltage which we deam around 6.0v will start to cause over discharging and puffing of the Lipos

Me: Yeah, I was being stubborn at the time and I guess once I slightly damaged the Lipo from my first incident an if the the voltages drops with the LVC are true, then I guess it was just a matter of time before they failed.

Brian: It sounds that way and I will be honest, the current batch of the 6000mAh Lipo's have been having problems handing low and high temperatures, especially down in Florida, were I've seen a large problem with puffing of Lipo's due to the heat

Me: Oh really?

Brian: Yeah, we are currently underway in producing more robust cells that will be able to take low and high temperatures better and hope to have them out soon. But we back up our products and I definently appreciate your honesty in regards to damaging the Lipos and we have no problem with replacing your Lipo's at the 50% cost rate.

Me: Awesome, thanks so much! I've just been so fustrated as this is my first brushless Lipo powered RC vehicle so its been a bit of a learning curve and fustrating at times because so many people have their own opinions and experiences about products

Brian: Yeah, some people think they just know everything and unfortuantely thats the tough part about getting info on the web, its hard to sort out the good from the bad. We try to visit the forums when we can, but this is just a two man operation here, so we keep pretty busy but also try to take care of our customers the best we can and we will take care of you.

Me: Yeah, I agree and I thank you again for your understanding and wanting to help me with. I've heard about SMC's customer service and I gladly say I can see where it comes from.

Brian: We appreciate that and we appreciate your honesty and always wanna support our customers and our products, even if some people will tend to blame us rather then their own faults

Me: Yeah, I wanna apologize if you got the impression that I was trying to start a flame war in regards to this issue and lay all the blame on you guys which was not my intent, I just had so many different "opinions" on what went wrong and who or what was at fault, I just wanted to get my facts straight, but in the end, I shoulda just called you directly

Brian: Yeah, again the web can be a good place for information, if you can sort through all the crap and personal biased. Feel free to contact us at any time with any questions either via email or phone and we will help you as best we can. I've been doing this for around 15 years and I''ve seen people do some really strange and stupid stuff at the race track. This company was orginally built to make products for racing R/C cars but lately, the direction of the market has been going to people just wanting to bash and have fun rather then racing, so were in a bit of a transition state, racing isn't as big as it used to be.

Me: Ok, so what do I need to do to get my replacement batteries a pay for the offset cost?

Brian: Well, don't rule out completely that you may not get your money back, as we will send them to the manufacturer and they can tell exactly what happened to the Lipo and if it was for some reason a factory defect, we will reimburse your money, so don't give up quit yet. They may find something wrong with the packs, they are really good about that.

Me: Oh ok, but I have a feeling it was pretty much due to me.

Brian: Understandable and again, thank you again for your honesty, we really do appreciate that and have no hesitation in replacing your batteries. We all make mistakes and i've made my fair share, i've fried and destroyed several ESC's and batteries over the course of this hobby, so im not immune to it either. I'm sorry you have to shell out more money then you already have. We will have our replacement upgrades for this Lipo's in the near future so whenever you get around to shipping them back to us, let me know via phone or email and I will set aside two of them for you.

Me: Well thank you very much Brian, I very much appreciate that. I guess in the end its just down to live and learn from your mistakes, even the expensive ones.

Brian: Yep and again, I will state the LVC is a good backup system to rely on, but as soon as you start seeing your power cutting off and on, you need to stop driving immediatly to prevent over discharging the Lipos' as thats what it sounded like you did initially and then it just grew worse from there. Im not sure about the voltage drops when you get close the LVC, so I won't say yes or no on that theory, we typically stop driving when we notice a big drop in speed.

Me: So you don't think anything was wrong with my setup or where I driving?

Brian: I sure don't think so. Everything looked exactly right and hell, I run with 22/44 gearing on my Flux and i'm running Badlands on another vehicle and I"ve had no such issues and that grassy area from your pics wouldn't definently not cause our batteries on normal conditions to puff like yours did. Unfortuately, I will also state that it really sucks that their is no industry wide standard for measuring and determing Lipo's actually C rating as well as voltage variables and mAH measurements. The brushless and Lipo industry hasn't been around very long and it sucks because due to a lack of agreement upon manufacturers, corporations and the like in regards to Lipo's, the consumer like you, has to find and wade through all the misinformation and garbage to try and determine was it true and what is false or just personal biased opinion.

It also sucks if someone doesn't have a knowledgable local hobby shop to go to for the right information and answers to their questions, especially for brushless and Lipo. They get told the wrong or inaccurate information and they go and unforuantly make an expensive mistake and have to pay for it in the end. What makes it worse is that someone see's them driving or flying a high end Lipo powered product, they get excited and rush and splurge on a expensive setup of either plane, helicopter or car. They don't do their research and find out whats required to run and maintain these high level hobby equipment and the the end result, it broken expensive toys, fustrated and angry customers and empty wallets.

Me: Yeah, my LHS is very good and the guy is very knowledgable, but he's still somewhat new to the the high end monster truck brushless and Lipo stuff, and he pretty much carries and recommends Thunder Power which I've heard are good, but damn they are expensive!

Brian: We along with Thunder Power take our C ratings to a standard beyond what other Lipo makers do and test them to make sure they meet and exceed what we put on our Lipos as far as output, voltage and mAh. Thunder Power does make very good stuff, I will say that other Lipo makers unfortuntely don't go as high in their quality requirements and the customer ends up getting screwed in the end when they fail. Again, feel free to contact us directly and we will help you as best we can in any area that you have questions on, thats what were here for. And I will try to remember you, but to be sure, please call or email me directly when you send your Lipo's back so I can set aside two of the more robust and updated packs when we receive them from the manufactuer.

Me: Wow, thanks so much Brian, I really appreciate it! Until now, your Lipo's were freaking awesome in my Flux, it just flew across the dirt, so I have no complaints against your product and especially SMC now that i've spoken with you twice now.

Brian: Thank you again, and yes, I've watched your youtube video's in that dirt bowl alley place and i've seen your Flux rip and scream across the dirt and it was impressive to watch, its an awesome truck. Thank you again for being honest with us, we do appreciate that as its become rarer and rarer among people AND companies and we strive to be different and better, and please contact us if you have any questions or concerns

Me: Thanks again so much Brian, i'll have to send my Lipo's in around two weeks from nowdue to finacial reasons which is a bit past the 3 month period since I bought them so I was worried about that

Brian: No worries, we will take care of you and get you up and running again with the more robust and updated packs once we receive them.

Me. Awesome! Thanks again so much Brian for your understanding, support and time for me. I know your busy so I'll let you get back to it.

Brian: No problem and again, contact us if you need anything, we want to be their for our customers

Me: Thanks and well keep in touch!

Brian: Thank you Bryce and have a nice day!

Me: You to Brian!

*both hang up*

And as Walker Cronkite so eloquently put it "And that's the way it is...." :D

Thanks to SMC and Brian, I will be taken care of, i've learned my lesson, gained valuble incite and knowledge and looking forward to driving my Flux in the near future with some new SMC Lipos! Oh, and i'll be raising my LVC to 3.4/3.5v

[JThiessen]

Good.

[snellemin]

I saw a SMC pack puffed up at the LHS. I'm guessing the Texas heat got to it as well. Sounds to me that the customer service is A+

[Finnster]

Cool, we let's hope its a one off and these things get fixed.

BTW, how hot was it outside? Montana is hardly FL...

Originally Posted by Finnster

Cool, we let's hope its a one off and these things get fixed.

BTW, how hot was it outside? Montana is hardly FL...

Upper 80's if I recall.

[lincpimp]

I guess that setting the lvc up to 3.4 to 3.5v per cell will not hurt anything, and runtimes will not be that much less. I run 3.2v per cell across the board on all of my setups (save for the quark escs as 3 v per cell is the highest they can be set) and have never had a battery failure due to lvc issues.

I hope the new chemistry smc packs perform better than the old ones... Thanks for the info FB, and good luck!

[zeropointbug]

I bet you the 'new' packs will be made with similar cells as the G3's, Neu's, and FP's, etc.

And it's great that they are taking care of you... alot of manufacturers will replace for 50% cost.

[pasan]

Out of curiosity, what's your gearing? It's interesting that Brian admits there's a climate related issue with some packs. All I can say is, I live on a hot, humid, tropical island where its 90+ in the day for 10 months of the year, and nothing like that has happened to my Zippys. On the other hand, I do have a 6 cell NiMh SMC pack which can barely power my Scaler Baja. Lets hope your new packs are reliable.