ONYX Charge

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BamaFan

ROLL TIDE!!
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Location
Birmingham AL
RC Driving Style
  1. Bashing
I bought a new summit yesterday to find out it doesn't include a charger. So I purchased the onyx 240 charger because it charges two at once. Since I'm new to electric is this a good charger for the money. I also purchased two additional 5000mah NI MH batteries that have 7.4 volts each. To my knowledge long as I don't run over 16.8 volts with the stock motor and esc I should be fine right?
 
You should be fine running those batteries. They're close to what Traxxas ships with the Summit. The onyx charger is decent for the price and will do the job, but you'll be looking at an hour charge time per pair of batteries.
 
Thanks Hamz. I'm excited about my summit. I've wanted one since they came out. Will the 5000mah make that much difference from the 3500 they come with?
 
It will give you a bit longer run time.
 
Can I run Lipo batteries with the summit stock esc?
 
You'll have to check the manual. I think so, but I'm not certain.
 
If your truck is equipped with a EVX-2 ESC and it's 2012 or newer you can run LiPos with no modifications. If your model is 2011 or older, you can still run LiPos but you'll need to add an external low voltage detector (LVD) for each battery pack..
Here's a quick how-to for switching between Nimh and Lipo on your ESC on page.18.
http://traxxas.com/sites/default/files/5607OM-LN-EN-R01-130301.pdf
 
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The Onyx 240 isnt a very good charger IMO. Personally Id return it and get something else. I mean if your never gonna run anything but NiMH then its fine but if I remember correctly it doesn't charge lipos. Once you start using lipos you'll wonder why you ever bothered with NiMH packs. All Lipo chargers can charge NiXX packs so Id look into getting one. You can get a dual or even a quad charger if you want to or you could just get a little more powerful lipo charge and a parallel charging board and then you can charge your summit batteries 6 at a time if you wanted. You can get a Hitec x4 80 for $129. Its quad channel and has 80W per channel. It will require a dc power supply but you can convert an old PC power supply if you have one laying around or you can even buy one pretty cheap new. Just my .02
 
Thanks greywolf for the advise. I'm already $500 deep in this electric stuff so I may just stay with what I got. I'm not going full electric and I've already spent another $100 on nimh batteries so that's going to have to do for a while. I probably won't invest in Lipo since I only bought this summit to go crawling with my buddies on Sunday. My true love is my nitros.
 
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