Totally random question I know, but thought I'd try here before registering on some RC forums

I've just bought a second hand Nitro RC car just because I've always wanted one and it was very cheap...!

I have 8 AA bats in the radio transmitter and 4 in the receiver on the car - both can be plugged into an 'all in one' charger - they are 9.6v and 4.8 volts respectively.

I've seen some chargers on eBay which will charge these voltages specifically, but also some cheaper ones - looking at one which is stated to charge 5.6v and 11.2v.

So - will this charge my batteries ok or knacker them?

(on a side note, I got the thing running today in the garden and it's amazing - well worth £60 if you can find a cheap-o one)

In my honest opinion i would use good quality non rechargable batterys.

Rechargables in my experience caused us problems. Not a nice feeling when it takes off full throttle on its own into a curb or someones car. I once saw a car do this at a meeting, it was a 1/8 rally cross so not that big, it hit a marshall and broke both his legs. OUCH

I raced 1/5 scale touring cars at national level and required more power though compared to 1/10 or 1/8 scale toy you will have.

Muchos good fun, i just have a toy now, which is a 1/10 IC Subaru with 2 speed box and i just use good quality batteries.

Hope this is of some use to you mate.

Thanks for the replay - I was trying to steer clear from standard batteries as a cost cutting exercise but 12 rechargeable duracells cost £20 alone!

I've installed a 'failsafe' which will hopefully mean no run aways but am having trouble with it, I'm guessing due to the batteries - the 'signal lost' is working perfectly, but it's sensing a low voltage and cutting to fail safe level on the throttle when the batteries are perfectly fine - I may buy one of the hump back packs instead which pushes out 6v instead of the 4.8 volts the 4 battery pack is providing.

You could go to a model shop and get a proper Nicad pack made to fit it, thats what we did in the 1/5 scale, but we were sponsored so some costs were greatly reduced, still 3 - 4K a season hobby though. Big servo's to haul it up from 100+ MPH. Big servo's for steering aswell, needs plenty of power.

I have had no issues with my toy except i hit a biggish stone which jolted one battery out whilst on full throttle, end result was 40 MPH impact with a curb. DOH.

Easy fix though.

It doesn't seem to drain the batteries to bad, as everything is light weight.

A fail safe is only any good if there is enough life in the batteries to move servo's to safe postion.

Agreed - exactly why I want it functioning correctly, having the fail safe working just for being out of range is only 50% of it's proper use - realistically it's the low voltage sensing that is going to be most useful.

I guess the steering servo takes far more power than the throttle servo so I'll notice the steering become really sluggish well before the throttle gets stuck wide open??