Another new to boats, maiden Revolt 30

[ccchris]

Maiden went great, my Revolt looked good out of box. Checked it and greased, ran 2 4s batteries through it with no issues.
Or so i think.. I may have ran my batteries down too far, first pack ran to speed control cut off and next one i stopped when the speed dropped off.
The 5000mah Venom pack took 4700 back in and the 4500mah Turnigy took 4300mah, from what i am reading i should be looking to leave a little more than that in the pack. The Venom pack seem slighly puffed (hard case so hard to tell for sure) but it may be me being paraniod. Both packs did balance out ok, the turnigy took a little longer to balance than usual but both appear good to go.
These are 30c packs, on a stock set up should i being timing it for about 4 minutes instead of waiting on the speed control or power drop?
Is there a way to increase the cut off on the speed control to not run the cells so low? Boats will get alot more expensive if i fry batteries everytime..

Chris

[tlandauer]

I never rely on the LVC, I time my runs and I have a battery checker so I check bebore the next run, usually I will change a pair of freshly charged batteries for the second run. Your left over reserve is too low. I leave 20% when done, on a 5000mah, there should be at least 1000 mah left in the batteries after you bring your boat back.
I don't have AQ ESC, so I can't tell you how to set LVC, but there is a setting on some ESC at 3v per cell---way too low.

[tlandauer]

You should read this, and these people leave 30% reserve! http://forums.offshoreelectrics.com/showthread.php?36932-LiPo-Battery-error.&p=448759#post448759 Actually the majority of my runs do end when I still have 25% - 30 % reserve. I meant I would not go below 20% but in retrospect my "advice" was not the best you could have received.
I should delete my previous reponse as I believe you will get better and more accurate info from the link I pasted. But we are all learning and there is no shame in showing my learning curve.
Cheers and have fun!

[ccchris]

Thanks for the link.
Will time runs and test this weekend to see where I stand with each of these batteries.
I don't think people (me) understand the high loads from these boats and if they run rc cars / trucks they expect to trust the lvc as they do on land. I suspect many a newbie fry a battery learning this the hard way.

[D for Dummy]

I don't wait for the LVC to stutter or time my sport runs. I bring in a boat when I notice the speed become slightly less. When I've pushed them that extra min or two, I gotten what I deserved... slightly puffed LiPos.

[dana]

I've had 5000mah packs take 5200mah back into them. They still work. I'm more concerned with where the voltage is