From what I've been able to gather across various forums I think it's just when advantages of LiFe are listed it's that they don't all work together. Eg one advantage is long life, another is you can flatten them totally down and they recover. My understanding is you can flatten them right down, but if you keep doing it then the long life becomes only the same as Lipo etc!?

Also, noone seems to know where the cells are from (don't think they are A123), so it's hard to get best advice. One of the rands says LiFe should always have their first 20-30 cycles being charged only at 1C and never being more than 2/3 discharged for example, but that after that they can be abused much more!?

Well, if the date for submitting cells is now past, then I can tell you no point in buying the Orion cells as they've not been submitted...

I took the plunge on some Muchmore saddle packs and gave them their first run today. Didn't feel I got the mix right until swapping cars for the final, where I ran:

5.5 SP V3 motor (which is what I usually run), geared one pinion higher than Pidge (for comparison, I usually run 1/2 teeth lower pinion than him when I've checked in the past), and turned up the punch on my esc to compensate. Felt pretty good, was still smoother than Lipo whilst feeling ok at top end, so will try the same on another track or two (I was at West Bridgford today) and see if it works well there too! Think you'll be able to get what you want from them Rog, just a shame it looks like no saddles have been submitted for 2011 :(

They charge weird by the way, hardly cc/cv at all, mine sit charging at 6.8-6.9v for ages, then suddenly jump to 7.2v and stay there ven as the charge rate goes to zero within a few secs, and clicks off as fully charged, bit weird but seems to work!!

It's a pain in the backside if none have been submitted. Oh well, another year of struggling again then :'(

After a motor failure and resultant dead ESC I think I should look around to see if there are any smoother setups out there than the Speed Passion ... I think that might be a big ask though.