Saturday, February 1, 2020

4 cell Lipo Nitro Head heater

So I recently made a tool for me to use my 4 cell lipos with a 12 Nitro Head heater.


First, you dont want to kill your lip battery. I purchased a low voltage cutoff circuit to help with that. This device lets you set a voltage and cuts off power when the input voltage reaches the threshold you set. Get one HERE   The heater I used you can get HERE. The Voltage regulator I used you can get HERE ... You want the 10 amp version.




I ended up using an old box that a servo came in! I try my best to upcycle stuff when I can.






















I used a body reamer to make some holes in the plastic for the wires to go through.
















Here is a shot of the Low voltage cutoff circuit. You can just put the wires in the green tabs and tighten it down with a screw driver. Be sure to pay attention to the positive and negative terminals.















I measured/eyeballed where I needed to make holes and made some. I then put some clear double sided tape to secure the circuit in the box
















You can see the different wiring here. So the red and black wires will be going into the output of the voltage cutoff circuit. and the yellow and black will go to the head heater. But first we need to grind off those tabs so we can adhere this to the back of the box.




















I filed down the tabs with a small hand file.























Once things are smooth, You want to strip the wires and start connecting things.






















As described previously, you just hook up the red and black wires to the proper output terminals on the cutoff circuit.



















Once you have the wires connected, you can use more double sided tape to adhere the regulator to the back of the box





















Once you have things stuck together, you can add a battery connector of choice to the input of the cutoff circuit. My choice was deans!






Shoe GOO those holes!!!















Another look at the product.






















The particular heater I used came with a xt60 connector with some alligator clips. I just cut the clips off and soldered  them to the output of the voltage regulator. That is the Black and Yellow wires. Be sure to add shrink wrap and make thing look half way decent. Otherwise if you are not going for looks, electrical tape will be fine.



















Plug in you battery and see if it work! You can set the cut off voltage by holding down the button until the numbers flash. You can the select up or down to select your voltage and then hold again to make the selection.


I dont go lower than 3.2V per cell to prevent damage to the lipo. So in my case I set my 4 cell lipo to cut off at 12.8 volts.




 One important thing to note, I shoe gooed the wires coming out from and going into  the box in order to prevent them from getting pulled on. You can use tape or gorilla glue or whatever. I found that the shoe goo worked best and provided a clean look.






 Here is the finished product! The numbers read out the current voltage of your battery and I have found this set up works really good. I get about 40 minutes of heating from my 6950MAH 4cell lipo.



Thank you Jesus for such a great life.

-Matthew Garcia



RCGP USA 2019

The 2019 RCGP at Thunder Alley Raceway in Beaumont California was one of the most enjoyable and stressful races I have been to in a long time. I want to start by thanking RaceAKA and Team Trinity for making the finest products and providing outstanding service on and off the track.
 I would also like to thank Oscar Lopez for all the help in the pits! Thanks to the TLR and AKA crew with all the help on setup and in the pits! 








The track was very challenging to say the least. The shot above was in the early morning while many of the racers were doing a track walk.




The RCGP was truly a world class race with some of the best talent and brands from all over Planet Earth. It was truly a sight to behold seeing all different brands and RC media present.
Here is a shot of the pit next to the track, more brands, more racers, high tensions. 


More team pits back over by the restrooms. Most of the top drivers from all over the world were in attendance.













More team pits out in the field to the left behind the track. That blue easy up way back in the distance is where I was pitting with Oscar. The winner of the RC2 class Camden Lime is the white easy up pit next to the TLR pits.













More Pits in the field behind the track. So many manufacturers and their drivers were making their presence known.














A shot of the interview area where the paid pros got to interact with the RC media














A shot of the fully stacked pit stand. You can feel the tension in the photo, the pressure was real for the pro guys.














A shot of me living my best RC life! I may look ridiculous, but I love having my race videos to review in order to make adjustments and see how my car behaves with certain setups.





















The RCGP is a Nitro buggy only race. It was really refreshing to only have one vehicle to worry about and maintain. At the same time, you end up being hyper focused on setup and other changes.










I was working really hard to find traction with the control tires that were given to us. That was probably the worst part of this race, the control tire... I had a heck of a time trying to find traction where ever I could















This is the first Race where I tried out the new Picco Blast .21 engine. I literally broke in the engine the day before the race and it was race ready by qualifying. Going from the LRP to this engine, I noticed that the Picco felt much more powerful.












 More vanity shots of my buggy!






 This was a really interesting part of the race.. At the RCGP they use this rack/gate apparatus that is very reminiscent of motorcross style gates. I was really fun to pick you spot based on your qualifying and try to navigate the carnage the often follows a starting gate like this.




Another shot of the starting gate.
The coolest of this race is that there are limited entries and you get to be up close and personal with a lot of Pro Drivers. I went through the pit lane and snapped a few shots right before one of the Mains.



 My first time seeing an Sworx
 The JQ buggy looked surprisingly good.






 The Champ of course.













My qualifier with the start gate! Check out the carnage!



















My Main














I really enjoyed this race and I hope to participate again in 2020 if I can secure my spot. Despite the control tires and the interesting starting gate, and the pursuit of the setup I really had a great time at this race and met a lot of really cool people. Definitely going to put some of the other RCGP races scattered all over the world onto my bucket list of races I want to attend. Really great job done by the track crew and the race organizers for putting on a memorable race. 






Thank you AKA and Team Trinity for all of your support with keeping my tires, motor, and batteries dialed.

Thank you Jesus for such a great life.

-Matthew Garcia