Took the plunge

[Formula413]

Little update. I figured out an easy way to make a warm air intake. All I did was remove the intake tube and attached silencer right where it plugs into the airbox. So now instead of drawing air from right behind the upper grill it draws air from above the radiator. Result: IATs about 40*-50* above ambient temperature. This cleaned up the engine bay quite a bit too. I also removed the coil pack cover.

BEFORE:



AFTER:





I will probably have to put everything back in the summer though, I will be closely monitoring IATs when the weather gets warm again.

I'm also going to be making a lower grill block, which looks like it will be pretty easy to do. The lower grill openings are not very large and lend themselves well to a flat cover. I'm going to mock them up with cardboard until I'm happy with the fit, then make new ones out of coroplast and paint them. I'm not sure if I'll be able to cover the entire lower grill, I'll have to experiment. There appears to be some sort of air temperature sensor down in front of the radiator on the driver's side, it might not be wise to cover it, but I don't know what purpose it serves.

I have a feeling it's not this simple, but does anyone know if you could connect a trickle charger to the traditional battery in the engine bay and be able to top off the main battery, or does the voltage converter not work in reverse?

[RobertSmalls]

Originally Posted by Formula413

There appears to be some sort of air temperature sensor down in front of the radiator on the driver's side, it might not be wise to cover it, but I don't know what purpose it serves.

I have a feeling it's not this simple, but does anyone know if you could connect a trickle charger to the traditional battery in the engine bay and be able to top off the main battery, or does the voltage converter not work in reverse?

That should be the ambient air temperature sensor, for the climate control. If it gets really, really cold out, it disables idle stop. So don't worry if the sensor ends up warmer because of your grille block.

The DC-DC converter does not work in reverse. You can grid-charge a Honda IMA battery, but you need a high-voltage, low-current power supply. When you hook one of those up, you bypass Honda's battery monitoring hardware, which would shut off charging in the event of a full battery or other problem.

A grid charger is on my to-do wish list, above a boat-tail but below rear view cameras. If you figure out how to make an automatic charger that you could plug in and forget, I'd love to hear about it.


There are a few folks on this forum who can grid-charge their Insights. 3-Wheeler and ericbecky come to mind.