Team Orion Batts? Numbers suspect?
 

At the shop I saw a few packs of Team Orion GP 3300's that looked too good to be true. The parameters to get the numbers looked OK except for a .85v cutoff instead of a .9v cutoff.

The packs were showing 450s runtime and 1.194v at 30A! Just too good to be true right? Anyone have any insight?

I would buy them quick.

I bought a few Orion packs last year before the Tamiya Nats, labels were 1.187 and 1.182, I forget what the runtime was. They are still running very strong, and I did run them through my Turbo 35 and the numbers were really close. The one thing on Orion packs is that unlike many other matchers, they use the LavCo matcher instead of the TurboMatcher. I don't know what each one does differently, but if you think about it using a .85 cutoff would actually show a little longer runtime (maybe 3-5 seconds) but it would hurt your average voltage #. All in all though, yes, I trust Rick's numbers.

I would buy them quick Too. Try it out.

I have purchased 8 of these packs where the numbers are 1.195-1.196. These are good batteries and I would definately buy them. They have been working great for me and they are my race packs. Orion does use the Lavco matching system. If that same pack were matched on a Turbo Matcher, the numbers would read a little lower. However, since they are discharged to a lower rate (.85) versus what the matchers using Turbo Matcher do (.90), it shows that the cells have great runtime and can hold their voltage for a long time. Buy them and any other packs you can find with similiar numbers!
Joe

I don't know this for sure, but I've heard the Lavco numbers average about .02v higher than a turbo35. I've never run Orion cells though. Now if this is true, even 1.175's are very hard to get a hold of right now so I'd go for them if I were you.

They also do the race discharge cycle when they match the packs meaning the discharge amperage is not always 30amps when cycling but could average out to like 27amps, that's a guess b/c they don't say what the lowest rate or time for each rate is or anything like that. As we know lower discharge amps means numbers that "look" better, so don't get too caught up in that. If people are cycling them on chargers and they are coming out to the same as the stickers then either they are getting the hookup on cells from GP (can't b/c GP sells same cells to every matcher and if better cell is made then it's available to everybody) or all those personal chargers are off in calibration or the settings they used to compare the settings when cells were matched.

buy them.. even if the numbers are off by a little bit.. you'll be in the 1.18s.. or even high 1.17s. right? cant really compare since team orion uses a lavco while others (fukuyama, promatch, etc) uses turbo.. but the ones i own are great. they run real good. my very non-scientific i totally cant justify way of comparing the two batteries matched on the two machines is just to subtract .10 from the lavco batteries :) :lol: so those orions you saw would be 1.18s in my book! then again, thats just my odd weird way of doing things. :weird: :lol:

either way with the shortage of high 1.17s, id definitely buy those. btw, are those the "new" SP cells that team orion has? a LHS over here has some high 1.18s with the new SP label. curious to see if the ones you saw are the same.

But, how much are they? 80-90 bucks?

Yikes. I would rather have two good packs than one really really good pack, cause it will just take twice the abuse and before long, those two ok packs are still going to be ok when your pricey pack is now only ok.......

the ones i saw at my lhs was $60

Orion # trick
 

For those of you who are not aware Orion's avg. Voltage #s are based on a 300sec cutoff not the pack's full dischange.

is that the tveten from Tacoma?

If thats the case with the orion #'s then they are crappy numbers. They should be above 1.2 like on Integy packs. Cheaters.

Has anyone took a new Orion/peak pack and tested them on their own turbomatcher?

I am sure most matchers have tried out other companies packs to see how they rate.


mtveten : How do you know this is what they do?


I only have these questiosn as I would liek to know the truth about orion/peak packs compaired to others


I think maybe it would be a good thing for a magazine to take a few packs from stores (not from the company) and test them all at the same reading to see how close the cells are to each other

Yep its Mark in Tacoma,

If you take the time to read all the battery FAQs on the Orion site you will find the fine print where they show their matching profile. Look for the DET setting, this is the time cutoff in seconds for the avg. voltage report, most matchers use 5000 ( CE maximum setting) so that their avg. volt reading will always be for the full runtime (to voltage cutoff) Some Matchers are not using a 300sec settinf for their DET vale to give them higher voltage #s.

regarding Integy, I am not sure if they have gone to the 300sec voltage cutoff with 30A discharge but I know that they used to match their packs at 20A instead of 30A. At 20A a good GP330 would be in the 1.21+ 560+sec range.

Also be advised that anyone advertising that the SP and Monster cells out there are not a different cell just a different label. For information on the GP cell generations and hoddy industry disclaimers please visit the Golden Peak website.

http://www.teamorion.com/faq/battery.asp#inside

Where on the FAQ does it state this? It's different equipment. They don't average at 300 sec. Compare apples to apples. And you can't compare Lavco to CE. Integy uses a different system again, and matches at 20amps.