Charles,

The problem that you had was most probably that the cells were sitting around in a shop for too long. All the modern cells have a self discharge higher than earlier cells. This means that they will take their voltages down below 0.9 volts which means that they will drastically lose runtime.

The Sanyo 3600 that you have bought are old school cells. They will have no voltage and you will be not very competitive.

The IB4200 cells that you have had that had zero voltage is not uncommon. The IB cells can "self destruct" or zero themself quite (I literally have had 1000's of these wasted cells during matching)

Best choice is IB4200 matched cells but always keep some charge in them when not being used. Then discharge the day before you are wanting to use them for racing