what kind of battery should i get for a zipzaps monster truck? i plan to make a 4.8 volt battery pack and it should be light weight and small. ni-mh or ni-cd would be nice but im open to lipo's and li-ion's.

you aren't going to be able to squeeze a 4 cell pack into a zzmt very easily. The extra voltage isn't really going to be worth the weight anyway. The key is current. A full size nimh battery will put out about 2x its capacity. I.E. A 1500mah AAA will put out 3000mah at 1.2V when you fraction the battery, like with a 1/3AAA you then put out 3x2x the capacity of the 1/3AAA. I.E. a 110mah 1/3AAA cell will put out 660mah of power at 1.2V If you boost the voltage up but have a small current, the motor isn't going to preform as well as it could. The additional voltage can also be dammaging to the PCB if you go over its rated voltage. I think the DC-DC converter on the mt board puts a limit on the voltage you can use at about 5 volts. so 4.8 is getting close to what the reciever can handle. If you use a lipo cell you can keep the voltage to a safe limit (4.2max-3min normal opperating voltage is about 3.7V) have a cell that's 1/3 the weight of your stock pack, and a smaller package. Some of the high discharge lipos will put out 15-20x their capacity. A high discharge 150mah lipo would probably be a good fit and supply plenty of power. You can pull one out of an airhogs aero ace or similar plane, they cost between 15 and 25 dollars, and you get a lipo charger built into the controler.

The down side is that the lipo can not be run down past 3Volts or it will permanently dammage the cell. A low voltage cutoff is a good thing to buy if you plan on going lipo with your projects. Someone sells them with a low voltage cutoff soldered to the battery leads but I'm not sure who... I'll check around a bit for you.

the chassis is stretched

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therefore space is no problem to me. i think the extra weight would help when im bashing in the dirt.[attachmentid=22781]

i do have a 3.7 volt li-ion. i dont think it will work well because its been sitting at .8 volts for a few months.

Oh jeeze.. if you got it stretched that long, just use AAA's. That will give you more current than you'll ever need.

wont the extra weight make it slower?

yeah... i have it stretched pretty far.

that things geared so low it should be able to haul the extra weight. If you have it stretched that far, why don't you drop an xmods board in it with a 130 motor? I know that LBRC made a really hot one with an I-waver board and LiPoly batts.

thats an idea... after this board frys or once im bored with it i guess i will need to try something.

i already ordered some 1/3 aa cells (double the capacity for the same price!) so soon i will make my battery pack and ride off into the sunset.

Aah! So tiny! Yet so long!

After my bout with trying to repair the Digimaster, I gave up on less-than-1/28 scale cars.

cheapbatterypacks.com makes really really great packs. You can also have them make it for you too, just make a clear diagram, and you should be good to go.