RC10Talk - The Net's Largest Vintage R/C Community

Im cleaning up my original rc10 buggy. The battery trays are mounted side to side and i would like to keep it that way so i can run the original mechanical speed control. Problem is none of my stick packs fit. I had a junk 6 cell so i opened it up and laid the cells in sideways old school and they barely fit,and they are bare cells without shrink wrap,so with a covering its probably a no go. Well i read on the internet that back in the day some of the sub c cells were smaller in diameter.Mine measure about 22mm so would need like 20,maybe 21mm width to build an oldschool pack that fits. Can anyone solve my problem here finding smaller diameter cells? Or just point me to a battery that fits in the sideways configuration? Would a 2s lipo burn it up? any help would be awesome,thanks

My experience was that higher milliamp batteries were slightly larger for more capacity. You might try to find some 1700 or lower capacity batteries to try in it. Back when they made those 1400-1500 batteries were about the biggest you could get.

Well the problem im running into is all the 1500mah sub c cells are 22-23mm.

I've been curious how an MSC would hold up with a 2s also. But I've never been adventurous enough to find out. I wouldn't recommend it, however. Like you, I found that a 2400 mah NiMh would just barely fit with the plastic end caps removed and no battery holders in the tub. It was a snug fit and therefore never moved around. I drove it several times just to remember the fun of the MSC. Then swapped it out for an ESC and 2s, and kept the brushed motor. I keep trying to use MSCs for nostalgia, but each time I end up switching back to an ESC.

I'm sure a mechanical speed controller could handle a 2S lipo. It's only 7.4 volts vs 7.2 and some were probably designed to handle 7-cell 8.4 volt sub-c packs.

The problem is you'd probably kill the lipo battery cells by draining the pack too far since there is no voltage cutoff built in like an ESC has.

you would eventually damage the MSC, simply due to the fact that the lipo will likely have a much longer run time, resulting in overheating the resistors. they get smokin' hot running for 4-8 minutes, much longer and the parts will start to degrade.