Questions about A123 cells

Hey guys, a couple of weeks ago, I was talking with the guy that owns my LHS about A123 cells and packs. Well, when I walked in today, he surprised me with a box full of A123 products. His question was, "well, what can we do with these?" I explained the pros and cons of the A123s, as I understood them. He said that he was unsure and wanted me to play guinea pig for him with some of the batteries, because he didn't want to sell a product that wasn't proven.

We discussed it for a few minutes, and he decided to let me use a couple of packs and a charger. I wanted to really push the packs to see what they were capable of. I decided to take one 2S1P pack and one 3S1P pack, to run in series for 5S. The test vehicle was my Losi 8ight T conversion running a MM esc and Feigao 9XL, with 40 series Moab tire running 12/44 gearing.

My subjective impression was that the small capacity battery pack had all of the punch of my 4S2P 8Ah pack and it was strong until it dumped. I'd have to imagine that the voltage must have taken some serious dips, so the 6 minute or so runtime that I got weren't bad. I'd also imagine that I could expect 15 minutes of runtime with a 2P configuration, if not more. After they dumped, the little 1P rig temped at 130*F. The esc temp was under 100* and the motor was at 140. This was after some serious running. I'd also imagine that the motor temp would drop a bit too with a 2P config, with the voltage drop not being so bad.

Now, this was probably more info than I needed to share, but I wanted to share it. Now for the questions...

1. The manual (if you want to call it that) states that the A123 cells can be charged to 4.2v "without hazard." Does that mean that we can just charge the cells to 4.2v all of the time? What does "without hazard" mean? Does it mean that it won't vent, or does it mean that we can charge the cells to 4.2v without adversely affecting the life of the cell?

2. I have a Thunderpower 1010C charger, which will charge A123 packs, or so it says on the TP site. At what rate can I charge these A123 cells. If it can charge in 15 minutes, that would be a rate of 9.2A. Does this mean that I can just build a 5S2P pack out of A123 cells and charge it at a 9.2A rate and have a fully charged 4600mAh pack in 30 minutes?

3. Can I balance the A123 packs using any lipo balancer? I have a thunderpower 205. Will that do it?

4. I know that some of you are doing surgery on Dewalt packs to recover the A123 cells. I want to use the commercially available A123 cells. The cells come wrapped in cardboard sleeves. Are the sleeves necessary? If they are, can I remove the sleeves and use shrink wrap around the cells instead. I'd really like to recover the space being taken up by all of that cardboard.

In the event that the cardboard sleeves are necessary, can I run two sleeveless cells in parallel (both electrically and physically) and then just shrink wrap the two cells together? I want to build a 5S2P pack using two 5 pairs in series.

If there are any points of interest that I missed, please volunteer the information. I'd really like to know as much as I can about these cells. From what I've seen so far, I really like them and will convert over to them. I might be selling some lipo packs cheap.

BTW, can anyone give me an idea of what sort of runtime I could expect running my 8ight in truggy form (standard MT size tires/wheels) with a MM and 9XL on a 5S2P A123 pack?

Once I get my Quark back from S&T, I'm going to see if my LHS will let me "borrow" three more 3S packs. I'd like to try a 6S2P config with the Quark. I know that the Quark doesn't like 6S lipo, but the 6S A123 might be more to the Quark's liking.

Thanks.