rc lipo after 4yrs 3 months 15K+ miles

Finally replaced my 888wh 24s 10ah rc lipo pack yesterday after 4yrs 3mo and 15K+ miles on it. Ran a capacity test on one of the 5000mah bricks today. Still charged to 4680mah with internal res. of 19mohm. Of the 12 bricks a few were puffed pretty good and all had puffed some. It still functioned good, I just got tired of looking at the replacement bricks I bought 6 months to a year ago for $180 on sale. That's just about 1 penny per mile and not sure how many more miles/years I could have gotten out of it before it got to 80% capacity as it's still at 93.6% capacity now. All you people using lifepo4 and 18650 flashilght batteries now have something to shoot for. Good luck.

Sorry, puffy cells aren't something I'm going to keep around my house, shed, or crotch.

How deep did you typically cycle them on a given ride?

My 12S 10Ah Turnigy packs saw 2 years/3000 miles of use between 4.1-3.7VPC then another year at storage voltage. No high or low temperatures, always stayed nicely in balance. Physical condition was as new - no puffing at all, but capacity was down to 3-3.5Ah for each 5Ah pack.

Syonyk said:

Sorry, puffy cells aren't something I'm going to keep around my house, shed, or crotch.

How deep did you typically cycle them on a given ride?

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Never lower than 10% soc. Puffy cells don't bother me. I'm not talking about ballooning out. Just a little swelling. Doesn't hurt a thing. If I kept you in my garage at up to 130F, you'd probably puff a little too. yeah, I didn't treat them with kid gloves.

Pretty amazing,, I've tended to hit the 80% line by year 3. By then, resistance more like 60. Clearly you got a really good batch. With RC lipo, the one thing we know for sure is it varies from batch to batch.

Better results for me with turnigy than zippies. I have had some zippies hit the high resistance before the end of year two.

Longest lasting ones I ever owned were 30c turnigy, but nowdays I keep buying 20c for economy. I like to make 14s 10 ah packs with 4 6s and 2 2s 5ha packs. Right now I'm running two that I bought last spring.

Much older stuff around still, till it really puffs. The old stuff runs my lawnmower at 7s.

I got a few 7yr old 20C Turnigy's that still deliver 50-60% capacity, 20-30mOhm IR per cell. Still pretty hard too.

All Zippy brands completely died a very long time ago.

As with all things Chinese, you can't believe what's printed on the label. First things I do with any new pack is to test IR, capacity and voltage leakage at top charge over a couple days.

I've tested 20C packs which delivered much lower IR (2-3mOhm) than 45-90C labeled packs (6-7mOhm). Now I only buy 20C and if they fail any initial test I'll contact HK and share my test results which in one case resulted in a replacement warranty pack sent. Didn't need to return the bad pack.

same results here with the zippies... early death regardless of cycle count and low DOD use..

Meanwhile the turnigy one's are holding up, got some that ran hard for 2 years, got pricked and de-puffed and are still going strong 2 years after.. one's on the trike are from 2009 !