LiPo batteries - be very careful!

[nogginthenog]

I bought an FTX Bugsta for my son recently, It was such fun that I bought myself a brushless Carnage too. This arrived with a LiPo battery, and from what I had read, I understood that they can be prone to fire whilst charging - particularly if overcharged, or if charging a damaged cell.

What I didn't expect though, was a significant and very dangerous fireball ( no exageration! ) while using an inteligent charger, following all instructions, charging an undamaged cell with approx 20 previous runs / charges.

Luckily this happened while charging outdoors on a stone surface, with nobody in harms-way. The cell was in a fireproof pouch but would have easily caused a fire if indoors or near a wooden surface.

So please take care with these cells. I dread to think of the consequences of one of these exploding whilst unattended and indoors.

Following this I am either going to sell the Carnage ( with a suitable warning for the buyer ) or try running it on NiMh cells ( is this possible? Does performance suffer much? ) .

And I might have a try at Nitro - are Nitro cars tricky to maintain? Is the FTX Carnage Nitro a good choice?

Regards, Noggin.