I forgot to mention that one of the cells is leaky. This was one of the packs that originally registered low... no surprise then that this cell measured 0.0 volts... dead. I noticed this right as I opened up this particular pack. I took the other pack that had a low voltage to work and charged each cell individually with a PXI-4130. That's a $2799 dollar Source Measure Unit :). Of course it's free for me since I work at National Instruments. So I hooked it up to each cell and charged them up one at a time. One of the cells was at 0.3 Volts; I pretty much wrote it off as a goner, but surprisingly it charged to full capacity. After charging, I decharged each cell using the 4130 and couldn't tell the difference between a good and the bad (0.3 Volt) cell. I then charged the pack up again and took it home. I performed a 35C discharge using a pure sine power inverter with a fan, computer, hard drive and several 100 Watt light bulbs plugged into it. Again, no apparent energy loss from the formerly dead cell.
FYI I drove a 40 amp load for 5 minutes with just 4 cells in series (beginning at 14 volts down to 11.2 volts final), which is about what it should drive. The batteries were only slightly warm. After 5 minutes, I couldn't tell those 4 cells from any other cells by touch. This is due to the very low internal resistance of the cell.
