I was getting ready to go race my SC10 the other night so I put my 6000 mah Dynamite Lipo Battery on to charge. It usually takes 1 hour at the most to charge and my Dynamite Lipo Charger always beeps when it is done. Well, I got a little carried away rebuilding some parts on my SC10 and before I knew it, the lipo had been charging for 2 hours and the charger never beeped!
As I walked over to the charger I could see the lipo was significantly swollen. At the time, I knew very little about swollen lipo batteries so I was a little concerned that it might catch on fire. I did some quick research to find out what I should do.
I found out that lipo batteries will swell when a cell has been damaged by over-discharging the battery or over-charging the battery. This can happen if you don't have a lipo cutoff on your ESC or if you over charge your battery (which is what happened to me).
A swollen lipo is basically useless. Technically you could use it, but you would be taking a serious risk of starting a fire or damaging other electronics on your SC10.
The best thing to do with a swollen lipo is dispose of it. Follow this simple guide from RCToys.com to dispose of your swollen lipo properly - Download the Guide Here
After you have disposed of your lipo, try calling or emailing the company that manufactured your lipo and see if they will send you a new one. It would probably be a good idea to take a picture of the swollen lipo before disposal. I am going to email Dynamite later today and see if they will send me a new battery. I'll post an update to this article when I hear back from them. UPDATE: I submitted a request to Horizon Hobby (Distrubtor of Dynamite Products) today and I'm waiting to hear back. If you have a problem with a Horizon Hobby product, you can submit a product support request here - http://www.horizonhobby.com/Service/RequestForm/).
While I had some poor luck with my 6000 mah Lipo from Dynamite, I have 2 other batteries from Dynamite and I never have had any problems. I suspect the battery was either damaged during a run or was just a defective unit. I still highly recommend Dynamite for all of your lipo battery needs.