Recently we reported about the new MaxAmps Multi Voltage Packs, well today we got some in the office to start messing around with. We have been talking about these since the day they were announced.
We will be messing around with these things for a bit, and will report back after we have done some field testing. (and dirt, and street, and sky!)

Make sure you head over to the MaxAmps.com site for more info!

News from the MaxAmps camp is that long time RC Car Action Editor Brandon Wilcox has joined the MaxAmps team. Sounds like he will be using some of his Marketing and Editing skills to keep MaxAmps going strong.

Make sure you head over to the MaxAmps.com site for more info!

Wow, I don’t think anyone saw this coming! MaxAmps has just announced their new Multi-Voltage 5250mah packs. These single packs can be built up so you can run 2s, 3s, 4s, even up to 6s! You can buy cell’s individually, or as a kit and then you can add more later!

This sounds pretty sweet! Many times I have needed a 3s or 4s pack and just didn’t have one I could use, but now if I can build up whatever pack I need… that could be pretty dang useful!

Check the video:

Make sure you head over to the MaxAmps.com site for more info!

Just got a email from MaxAmps about some crazy contest….

Headline: You have never seen anything like this before!

Press Release: MaxAmps.com is releasing a new product this week that we guarantee you have never seen before. The first person to guess what it is wins a brand new Traxxas Slash 4X4. Send your guesses to austin@maxamps.com before the release date of Tuesday 7/27.

Hmmm.. never seen before.. I’m sending my guess of a RC Unicorn! Fingers crossed!

We just got a video from MaxAmps of them doing a little bashing fun with a Savage Flux on a 6S Lipo MaxAmps setup.

Click on the image or this link to head over to their MaxAmps Minute site and check it out!

Looking for more crazy Savage Flux on 6s Video? Check ours out on our Big Squid RC YouTube channel.

We just got this, so it’s a little late to the party, but MaxAmps is giving you $15 towards the purchase of anything on their site, TODAY ONLY! That’s June 02, 2010. There is no minimum purchase with this, so you don’t have to buy like $200 worth of stuff or anything like that. You just need to use the coupon code: 15BONES .
On top of that, they have their free warranty upgrade! Just go to the Max Amps page, log into your membership account, use the 15BONES coupon code at check out, choose the free warranty upgrade in the drop done meny, and you are set!
One coupon per household!

Make sure you head over to the MaxAmps.com site for more info!

Are you looking to run a LiFe battery this year at the electric nats? Well MaxAmps will have you covered! Their LiFe 4500 is now ROAR approved.

I’m glad to see the LiFe batteries starting to get some acceptance. The fact that they are safer, and you can be a little more careless with them, is more our basher style!

Make sure you head over to the MaxAmps.com site for more info!

“Dear Brian,
First let me take the time to say, I really enjoyed the two battery shootouts. They were well written and I think by the second one you really have it nailed down with good testing criteria for each battery and being able to replicate situations so the testing for each is equal. One thing that really kind of bummed me out was that you DIDN’T test the Max Amps batteries. I know you stated in the article why you didn’t, however I just don’t think those were good enough reasons to leave them out of testing. Over time you’ve proved that your tests and product reviews are unbiased. I don’t think any of your readers would accuse you of being biased if they did well. I imagine that you guys didn’t want to include them because if they didn’t perform well that they may pull from being a sponsor. I know that’s a tough choice to make, but in the end, by NOT testing them, you may have done them an even bigger injustice because now people will run out and get the batteries that did well in your tests because they have hard evidence to base their purchase off of.
(continued…)
Ok, now I’m rambling lol but PLEASE include Max Amps in your next shootout and PLEASE do a Premium Battery Shootout so we can see if it really is worth buying one of these high priced, high mAh battery packs as opposed to the lesser 4000mAh and lower type of packs. Again, thank you for taking the time to read my email and take it into consideration. If you have any questions at all, please don’t hesitate to shoot me an email.

Sincerely,
Scott K”
———————————-
I’ve omitted a large part of the email just to shorten it down a bit for our readers, and while it was addressed to our editor Brian, I think it makes a good “ASK Cubby” email.

First off, thanks for the props Scott, they are few and far between. Now to get to the crux of your email. Having a MaxAmps battery in one of our battery shootouts would be ratings gold. Out of all the emails we get, MaxAmps and Zippy are by far the two most requested brands that people want to see tested. MaxAmps is the biggest name in Lipo, and we’d love to see them in a future shootout. From speaking to the guys at MaxAmps, they put a tremendous amount of time into testing and building their batteries, and their reputation for customer service is a good one, all of which equals a great contender in a shootout. At BigSquid we have a great deal of respect for the crew at MaxAmps and we will not include them in a shootout without their permission. To the people that want to see MaxAmps in a shootout I would recommend giving them a call to let them know. They are good people there and I’m sure they’d like to hear your feedback.

The best thing about shootouts is that there are so many to do, many more than time allows. We’d like to do a 4S shootout for 8th scales, we’d like to do a shootout between sub $50 packs, and I’d especially like to see a shootout between former winners.

We’ve got lots of shootouts coming, with the next one being our charger shootout. It’s well underway and should be hitting the front page in about another week. Not only will we be testing how easy each charger is to use and it’s features, but also how long it takes to charge a pack (some are a LOT faster than others!) and the actual performance of the batteries afterwords. It should be groundbreaking and a good read.

Thanks for reading and submit your questions/comments and hate mail to cubby at BigSquidRC dot com!

YOUR Cub Reporter

Are you a fan of street art (graffiti)? Well, I’m not a big fan of graffiti, but I truly enjoy Banksy’s works. This week the new Banksy film “Exit Through The Gift Shop” premiered in New York City and LA, and starts showing in Chi-town on the 30th. Google image search Banksy for some examples of his work, I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

What’s the next big trend? Big, high current chargers, that’s what. Did you know that you can charge the new MaxAmps Lithium Iron Phosphate packs at a 15C rate? Hell yes! For example lets take their LiFe 2S 4500 mah- if it’s charged at 15C that would be a 67 amp charge rate. Even MaxAmps regular Lipo packs can be charged at 5C, so if you are running their 6500 mah pack, that’s over a 30 amp charge rate. Higher and higher charge rates are slowly but surely becoming the norm, which if you hate waiting for a pack to charge as much as I do, is GREAT news. But… while battery tech has made leaps and bounds, there aren’t many high current chargers on the market, and none that I’m aware of that can charge beyond 30 amps. Even some of the popular battery message boards like the one over at RC Groups are starting to show a shift from the number of threads devoted to Lipo batteries, to threads on uber new chargers. Oh and for every uber new high current charger, you’ll need a big azz power supply, so I expect to see more big power supplies hitting the market as the demand increases. The big downside to all of this? Price, it’s simply not cheap to produce high output chargers and power supplies, but I’ll dig deep in my pockets for faster charge times.

I love America, the land of the free, the home of the brave, and the home to free speech.

Earlier this week our editor contacted the guys over at RedRC in an effort to buy advertising from them. If you haven’t heard of RedRC, they are a Euro based rc website that posts all the press releases that come out from across the globe. Personally, I hit a bunch of rc websites every day- NeoBuggy, RC Car Action forums, RC Tech, RC Groups, RC Universe, Traxxas, BeatYourTruck, RC-Monster, and of course RedRC. Now RedRC doesn’t really have a lot of news for American readers, but it’s cool seeing what’s going on across the pond and some of their photos are epic (like the press release photo of some dude that had just been picked up to drive Mugen’s and he was photographed in his moms living room while wearing his socks). Anyways, RedRC refused to sell BigSquidRC advertising, because we are too close of competition. Boy I’m glad to be American, not only because if someone is willing to give me money I WILL take it, but also I know we have a leg up because of our wonderful freedom of speech. I could talk all day long about RedRC, or RC Car Action magazine, good or bad, yet I know they’ll never utter a peep about BigSquid because they are afraid they would be helping the “competition”. That’s great for us because readers want the truth, they want uncensored news/views, not the watered down stuff you get from the other magazine websites.

Remembers- our charger shootout testing finally gets started this weekend, and even though I missed the deadline with my new RC Myth column, it should be done in a couple more days. The first edition is all about what happens when a Lipo battery is forced below 3.0 volts per cell, hopefully it will make for an interesting read. Lastly, yes, yes, YES BigSquid will be videoing a 30C discharge of a Lipo pack for you guys. You all wanted it, so you will see it!

Till next week, support your local hobby shops, tracks and bash spots!

YOUR Cub Reporter

A We mentioned there would be news coming out of the MaxAmps camp, and here it is!

MaxAmps 3 year/300 cycle warranty is now free! To top it off, the MaxAmps Green Series packs include a 5 year, 1000 cycle warranty! This is actually pretty awesome. Lipo’s are expensive, and do have a habit of going south. To get a warranty like this is really great! It’s nice to know that our hard earned basher money won’t be wasted.

Make sure you head over to the MaxAmps.com site for more info!

A little birdie told me that there should be some news coming out of the MaxAmps camp within the next 24 hours. No idea if it’s big news or not, but since Max Amps usually does not make that many announcements, it’s usually something pretty good. Keep your eyes here of visit MaxAmps.com for more info!

Oh yea! Finally a pack from MaxAmps that we can run the 1 hour a-mains with ease! The new MaxAmps 99000XXXXL! Rated at a conservative 50C, this new 2s pack will not only get you through that 1 hour a-main, but through the rest of the week of racing! We got our hands on a early pack to test, and while we loved the long run times, it didn’t do so hot in the fit and weight categories. As you can see from the picture, 4 hours into our test I decided to take a little jump and CRACK! What sucks is I think I still had a good hour of run time left!

While we are not sure exactly when these packs will be shipping, we do know, you may want to start saving your $ now!

Ok, this product will make a lot of bashers happy! New from MaxAmps is the LiPo XL series! These new packs come in 6000mah, 9000mah, and 13500mah! Holy Snikies! MaxAmps says it’s the ultimate upgrade for the Traxxas Slash with the 13500 pack giving up to 81 minutes of run time! That’s some serious bashing there!
Other Details:
# 81 minutes average runtime(13,500mah Capacity)
# 45mm X 162mm X 39mm
# 60C – 5990 surge watts(810 amps)
# 654 grams
# 5C Fast Charge Capable
# Water-sealed for all-weather protection

Note: These packs are a little larger, and will only fit vehicles that can take a 7-cell NIMH pack.

Visit MaxAmps.com for more info!

A big CONGRATULATIONS goes out to Tim Smith and Grand Motorsports for hitting some serious speeds recently at the International RC Speed Challenge in California. Tim established two new world speed records for the ISC 2wd modified and stock classes with his Grand Motorsports Dragsters! Tim’s yellow GMS dragster hit 101.61mph with a Speed Passion 4.5 motor and 7.4v MaxAmps LiPo’s becoming the first 2cell car over 100mph! Tim’s other modified GMS dragster with front wheel setup hit 126.50mph with a Tekin RX8 ESC and Neu motor to become the fastest two-wheel drive RC vehicle! Awesome!

Congrats Tim and GMS!

Pro Driver, good friend of Big Squid RC, and all around good guy, Tim Mohr just won the Great Lakes Division title for 1/8th scale electric buggy this weekend at the State Line RC Raceways in Fremont Indiana! This is Tim’s 3rd division title in the RC Pro Series!
His setup, for those interested, Castle Monster ESC, Castle 2650kv Motor, MaxAmps LiFe batteries and a Caster Fusion EX-1R! Congrats Tim!!