Do I need to exhaust new battery on first run?

[Carrazy]

New to the hobby and upgraded my Raptor battery to a Speedpack Ni-MH 4500 mah.
Just wondering if I'm supposed to run it till empty? Or is it ok to stop halfway and recharge for next time?
Thanks in advance!

[CrawlinMike]

Either way is just fine. I would run it down every so often though. I don't mean let it trickle discharge on small lightbulbs either. Just run it in ur truck till you notice it dump.

[Carrazy]

Cool.

Thanx

[pavmentsurfer]

You should NEVER run any battery to full flat... that is bad for any pack, lipo, nimh or nicd... most people think you should run them right flat but this is never the case.

[kwitty]

Agree with Pav above, when the vehicle slows down it is the LVD kicking in, running it down further can put the cells below the minimum too far, not good for the batteries and sometimes your charger will not pick up on the charge cycle as it detects a 'low voltage' safety issue.

[pavmentsurfer]

For lipos yes... but for NIMH's there is no LVD so you need to pay attention to when the truck really starts to loose power. Your going to notice a drop in performance after about the first 5-10 minutes. Thats typical of a NIMH pack. But after youve run for a while your going to notice another big drop in performance. This is when you should stop. Most kids just keep running till the truck won't move... this does irreversible damage to the cells.

In this regard, lipos are actually easier because the Low Voltage system (whatever system your using) will tell you when to quit. With nimhs you gotta know when.