[Divefire]

Hi guys, just thought I’d weigh in here with the experience I’ve had running the Team Orion Lipo’s in a XXX BK.

Now I’m new at all this, this season’s been my first and my driving is fairly rubbish, so the Orion pack has taken a pounding in my car, and, it’s fine. Frankly it’s been a joy to use, I charge it up the day before and top it up after each run. Well basically it goes like this, finish heat, grab car, run to the pit, take out battery, plug it into the charging gear, set it off, go marshal.

It’s usually topped up in about half an hour at most and ready to go. I’ve not had an issue with them going flat, or running out of charge, or any signs of going boom either. Even managed to get it wired the wrong way once (not for anything more then a second) and it still works fine. So yeah it’s fairly robust. Also I charge at 4 amps, from what I understand you don’t get any benefit from charging them at a higher amp rate other then a faster charge time. It comes off the track warm, but cools down while it charges, which is nice.

As for cost, at £90 it was the same as three club packs of nihms and when you take in to account that it should stay at 80% capacity for 1000 cycles, well I think it’s better value.

I have to admit brushless and lipo are what made me take the plunge to go racing finally, takes a lot of the effort out of it. Yes lipo need to be handled correctly but I don’t think that’s any different to how nicads were when they were first being used many moons ago.

So yes, be careful with them, it’s a new technology for us and I can only recommend the Team Orion pack from experience, but I think for the fact it cuts down on amount you have to spend on batteries at the very least it’s the way forward.


Mat