Raylit20's 05 HCH
 

Hey guys, I picked up a new to me 2005 Honda civic hybrid CVT.

I will be documenting my progress with the car towards my goal of 50mpg city, and hopefully I will be able to dispel some myths on Honda's hybrid system in this car.

Nearly all of the driving I do is in the city with average speeds under 35mph and frequent stopping and starting. With temps in the -5F to 10F range I have been averaging right around 43mpg city, with no mods on newer non-LRR tires.

My first mods were a packing tape grille block and a quick 20 minute engine bay blanket. I have also ordered a magnetic 200w block heater and the parts to build a DIY slow charge PHEV system.

Pictures to come soon.

Cool! Excellent start with the MPG too.

Advice: send back the 200w heater. Get something with POOOWWWAAAHHH! As Clarkson would say. The 350w heater on my Metro took too long to make too little difference in temps. So I put in an 800w unit. MUCH better.

The 200 watt heater is being swapped out in favor of a 500w hot pad heater. I also have the parts here now to build my grid charger. My only problem is finding enough time to get all this work done.

I ran into a problem - The wiring in my house is mostly pre-WWII knob and tube; This means It's not going to work for me to safely pull as much power as I need from the existing wiring.

So now I have a single 100 watt monocrystalline solar panel and a charge controller on order for my project. I already have an inverter and two 12V batteries ready for my small system.

The plan now is to pre-warm my car automatically with timers every day (With no change to the power bill!). And when I move, the setup is compact enough to come along with me. With additional panels and batteries I could charge the car off-grid as well.

You might want my manual IMA control system for the HCH1 then to eake out that mpg and IMA battery. ;)

Imac&c hch1 civic - Insight Central: Honda Insight Forum

Also some details on here under the hybrids section.

PM sent. :)

I had my first full tank fill with the new car this week. The FE/trip meter B says I averaged about 40mpg over the whole tank. Many of those those days were below 0F and hybrid FE really suffers when temps are that cold. Most days my car will never reach full operating temp, though the grille block and oil pan heater help tremendously.

Also, my battery pack has about half the capacity cold as it does warm. I am often in forced recharge mode as I typically DWB and EOC, leaving little kinetic energy for regen.

I have found that EOC is very easy in this car - I release the throttle, then lightly depress it again until the FE gauge displays 120mpg. At that point, the engine is off until I need to accelerate again; the transition from EOC to acceleration is seamless and responsive. :D

I am keeping an eye out for a superbrain 989 to cycle my pack and regain some capacity. I am also looking for a solution to add a piggyback battery pack to gain further usable capacity.

Manual IMA control
 

Well with the new gizmo you can do quite a bit to protect the battery and or cycle it a bit to try and improve it. :)

Here is a summary of the button/unit functions in the V11 software.

* Button/Device Functions. *

We have three buttons and four different lengths of button presses.

<0.5s = Short press for Up/Down Buttons [SP]
<1s = Short press for Cancel Button [SP]

0.5 - 3s = Medium press for Up/Down Buttons [MP]
1 - 3s = Medium press for Cancel Button [MP]

4 - 5s = Long press [LP]

6 - 8.5s = Very Long press [VLP]

Each button has the following functions.

Assist (Right/Up) Button [Red Led]
Short press = Inc Assist Level or Dec Regen level (Assist has 4 steps/clicks) 25,50,75,100%
Medium press = Max Assist
Long press = Toggle Assist Battery Protect Mode. Limits all Assist request to ~12A
Very Long press = Toggle OEM Assist Enable/Disable

Regen (Left/Down) Button [Green Led]
Short press = Inc Regen Level or Dec Assist level (Regen has 5 steps/clicks) 0,25,50,75,100% [Note the first click activates IMA load balance mode.]
Medium press = Max Regen
Long press = Toggle Regen Battery Protect Mode. Limits all Regen request to ~6A
Very Long press = Toggle OEM Regen Enable/Disable

Cancel (Middle) Button
Short press = Cancel any Manual Assist/Regen or Cruise Control Mode
Medium press = Activate Cruise Control Mode. (Target Speed = Speed when Cruise activated) (Flashing Red/Green Led)
Long press = Toggle AutoCancel Assist/Regen <5mph Mode. Default is ON
Very Long press = Toggle IMAC&C Enable/Disable and reset to program defaults

Sounds tricky but it's only four connections behind the glove box then away you go. ;)

Does anybody have any info on converting the car from a CVT to a 5 speed manual? I'm not finding anything at all online about trans swaps in the HCH's.

On most civics this is a fairly straightforward process - Does the IMA system complicate anything?

You will have to change the ECM for a manual version and also remove the TCM which controls the CVT unit. The dash cluster will also need changing as it's different. Connection to gearbox is different. In facts lots of issues some of which we won't have thought of. Its much much easier just to buy a manual car. You will have to virtually buy a wrecked one anyway to get the bits to make the change to your cvt.