So Lipo's....you've had the right advice so far, but if you want to understand a little more about it...hopefully the following will help. I'm not a 'professional expert', but this has been my understanding of all the info I've found out.
Typically you charge at 1C, your battery will have a charge rate in terms of C printed on it somewhere. Some of the newest ones say you can charge at higher rates. This is new, and a bit of an unknown IMO, but will probably be the norm in time to come. Faster charge rates in theory reduce the life of the cells, so I tend to stick to 1C as I can peak between races at that rate anyway. Apart from anything else, currently few chargers can give you charging rates higher then 1C anyway!!!
C = Capacity...so if you have a 5500mah battery, then you'd ideally charge at 5500mA = 5.5A
Lipo's must always be charged in Lipo mode (CC-CV mode, constant current-constant voltage), whereby it will charge at full constant current to begin with, ie the 1C rate until the voltage gets to a certain (virtually fully charged) point, then it will automatically start to slowly vary (drop) the current so that the voltage stays constant and peaks at a fraction under 8.4v in theory. That's all automatic though so no need to worry about it, just helps to understand what it's doing and what the numbers all mean.
Never use Ni-MH mode on a lipo...this will invariably lead to damage of the lipo and potentially a fire! Essentailly the currrent/voltage drop that you used to see on a Ni-MH cell to see it was charged never comes (if my memory serves me correctly!), so it will just keep pumping current in! This is bad!
Also, in use, lipo's don't have the same peak behaviour, where the cells are most punchy early on in a race and gradually drop off like Ni-MH's did....they just keep punching all the way until they dump. Always run with a voltage cut-off on you ESC...you should never let them actually dump as that also damages the cells and may cause a fire in the most extreme cases.
In the same vein, if you haven't peaked your cells, you won't see bad performance on your car either, so it's not a problem...you just get less run time...if you ever even get close to it, which is extremely unlikely in club racing environment.
Damage and fires are very uncommon, and lipos are really a lot easier to use than the old technologies...you just need to understand how it works
