Did Hot Trick actually get something right?

[GoMachV]

Did Hot Trick actually get this right? I mean, this is common knowledge now.... But not back then! Based on the literature.... I'm a believer!

But wait....that doesn't look very professional....I mean, Speaker wire? Really?

Maybe inside is better. They spent a whole year on it. Plus i want to see the tamper proof mechanism

So....not tamper proof.....and far from high tech.

Thank you Hot Trick for not letting me down! Haha

[klavy69]

well there goes your 90 day warranty


















Todd

[GoMachV]

Yeah, 90 days lol....uh huh. Your first pack might not be done before warranty is over lol

[LTO_Dave]

Did you try it with LiPo's yet?

It honestly looks like something you could build with one of those DIY electronic learning kits.

[aip47-2008]

Yeah, 90 days lol....uh huh. Your first pack might not be done before warranty is over lol

Worked great with the horribly fragile SCE cells!

[RichieRich]

What a horrible, condescending set of instructions.

[mk-Zero]

LMAO! What a steaming pile...
If it took them a year to develop that they must have only worked on it one minute per week

[Coelacanth]

It seems almost everything Hot Trick designed was a tad half-assed; there was always a design feature here or there that just made me think "afterthought"...like they overlooked something in the design and incorporated a half-assed solution. Like the way hinge pins were mounted on their control arms, with a bloody screw & washer. All they had to do was drill 3mm holes in the things and use e-clips to hold them in, for Pete's sake.

The innards of that charger are pretty shameful, and you gotta love the speaker wires. But what takes the cake is the "NUFF SAID" in the instructions. How can you take a company seriously that puts "NUFF SAID" in the instructions?

[limestang]

If you look very carefully, you will see flux all over that capacitor. That being the case, you have to charge the battery while driving at 88.8mph. It should be stated more clearly in the detailed instruction manual, right in front of "NUFF SAID"


The speaker wire comes in handy when you want to pass time playing your guitar while charging your batteries.

Have you seen the cool hot trick hat that goes with this charger - Way ahead of their time.

[Seabass]

The instructions are classic

I guess I was using the wrong charger since my batteries got hot all the time during racing and charging.

My old Tekin BC100 is definitely outclassed by master piece.

This is the exact reason why it boggle my mind that people like the Hot Trick stuff. You can say the guy made some questionable stuff but he sure took advantage of a wide open market. Kudos to Mr. Hot Trick and shame on you at the same time, hahahaha.

In reality you gotta give the guys props, he sure was able to span a wide range of the RC market and I bet he sold a ton of those chargers. I know I have come across tons of his charging accessories over the years I have been buying used cars and parts.

[GoMachV]

I'm posting a pic of the interference eliminators next. I love the instructions when he wrote his reasonings. Very fun reads

[Jim85IROC]

They solved the world's battery charging woes with a diode and 5 resistors. Amazing!

[GoMachV]

It reminds me of the old car stereo days, except Hot Trick didn't even put it in a fancy case lol

[jwscab]

while i'm not defending hot trick in any way, the charger you have shown is essentially pretty standard. it would actually work really well as a dumb charger, though it would take quite a while to fully charge packs. all the bells and whistles on the complex chargers are just so you can charge a pack as safely as possible as quickly as possible.

marketing is a funny thing. That amp pictured above likely could hit the specs, albeit for fractions of a second.

[Phin]

For 1986/87 I think it's a pretty good charger....especially for $38. Look through the RCCA scans from those years. Most chargers from that era were timed/constant current chargers (no peak detection), and could cost almost twice as much as the Black Max.

The Tekin BC100L is certainly better, but it's also a bit newer (c. 1990) and created by the man who invented the whole Peak Detection thing, Kevin Orton. On the other hand, the Tekin 850 from that era doesn't exactly make the Black Max look like it came from the Stone Age.

I will concede though that Bill Steele may kinda come off as a condescending d-bag in the instructions.

... Like the way hinge pins were mounted on their control arms, with a bloody screw & washer. All they had to do was drill 3mm holes in the things and use e-clips to hold them in, for Pete's sake.

Can't drill a 3mm diameter hole in a 2mm thick arm. What you could do, if you really want a captured hinge pin, is get two sets of Hot Trick arms and screw them together to make a thicker, heavier arm.