So, I installed Rage on Friday, without a hitch. I did not wipe system, and I did not flash a stock boot.img before flashing Rage. I decided to do this based off of my previous experience with my tablet. This is what I did:
1. DL Rage and place in external SD
2. Boot into Recovery and make a backup
3. mount system, then wipe cache/dalvik
4. FDR
5. Reboot recovery
6. mount system
7. choose install, and flashed Rage
8. wiped cache/dalvik
9. re-boot and setup
With all of these installs, I never wiped system and never flashed a boot.img. The ones that failed might have worked if I had flashed a .img at the same time (doubt it), but I'd be willing to bet it has more to do with the updater script that Tim found, and that was included into the Rage ROM (and looks like Flying Jelly too). I didn't attempt swapping the script or flashing boot.img with the ones that failed, my phone needed a rest. I'll try it out later or someone else can add to this thread.
1. Rage-Good to go, everything works
2. Flying Jelly-Good to go, everything works, but it prompted me to take the Verizon OTA as soon I connected service. I'll just freeze updater.apk with TiBU if I decide to set FJ up all the way. Right now, I just booted back into recovery, backed up FJ so I can have a quick restore if I decide to run it.
3. Energy-No go. Failed immediately. Restore went fine.
4. Eclipse-No go. After I attempted flash, I was unable to mount system, but restore went fine