Recently acquired a 2003 Honda Civic Hybrid with 236k, a bad head gasket and an IMA light.
Previous owner sold me the car for almost nothing because he couldn't get plates for it as it wouldn't pass emissions. Car had/has a P1449 code and here a CEL is an automatic failure, even if it's just the hybrid system, kinda stupid IMO.
I found a thread about charging individual cells on here (
http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...0-a-19975.html ) and decided to give it a go, I have an extensive background in RC hobbies, so chargers weren't an issue and the tech/methods are the same.
Getting the battery pack out was pretty straight forward:
On the bench:
I took the pack home, I knew I'd be into this for 20+ hours and wanted the comfort of my couch, even though I wasn't on it very long. Running 9 chargers at once, rotating batteries between charge and discharge, logging data, I was running all over, even with help!
The disaster of doing this in my kitchen:
So after 2 exhausting days, who knows how many kilowatts of power, I was left with this data set:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...1TktHQ0E#gid=0
Unfortunately I got impatient and it was late Sunday night, so I rebuilt the pack and installed it. No change in the lights. Some change in the performance of the car. I saw a few more bars of charge and assist in the first 20 miles or so of driving. Also, oddly, some worse MPG for the first 200 miles.
So now I'm back to deciding if I want to buy a used pack, have this one reconditioned (don't like the price or the time on that option), or just continue to get 48.8mpg and not whine about the IMA not working 100%.
I'm not opposed to giving the batteries another go, but I don't like not driving the car, and I did drive it about 35 miles with the battery out and it was just too nerve racking.