2001 Insight

[cowmeat]

Or plug a $5, 500w work light in to it. Comes complete with enclosure and everything. If you still want plenty of watts.

Here's our homemade discharge rig, with (2) 200 watt light bulbs

Word to the wise, don't try to discharge after you get off work with twin 200 watt bulbs! That's why I'm driving a Volt now instead of an Insight!

[Ecky]

The Insight's battery is something like 1kwh I think, which costs most people between 3 and 15 cents to charge to full.

[Natalya]

I won't need to discharge the battery for a few more months now, so in the interest of over-building the discharger for fun because there's no real time constraints, I went and got some 1/16" thick sheet aluminum today.

What I'm going to do is build an external bracket on the back of the discharger where I will re-mount the T4 socket. I also got a 300W bulb, so I'm putting that in there instead of the 500W. The bulb was like $3. My higher-voltage switch also came in from Mouser, and I installed that. The simple solution is of course the lightbulb screw sockets, but this is going to look cooler.

[Natalya]

I just love tearing apart the lower dashboard.

What I was doing was I replaced the EFAS SPDT button with a momentary SPST button which powers the coil of a DPDT relay. One side switches the VSS signal for EFAS, the other side opens the circuit on my clutch switch. Having a clutch switch activated can prevent Auto-Stop either from my EFAS or from normal driving conditions, so it's good that this one button now takes care of both of those. I suppose I could have gotten a TPDT relay so that I could wire in the temperature resistor too, but I didn't want to go that far.




And here it is all put back together.

[Natalya]

This car is SOLD!! $2000 USD. It went to my co-worker, she was in desperate need of a new (to her) car. I'll return to the G1 Insight community eventually, when the time is right and I find the right car I'm definitely getting another one. I miss it even though I still see it every day. I'll still do work on the car whenever she needs something, so this might not be the end of this thread.

[cowmeat]

Your thumb button set up on the shift knob is identical to my first one!

I really haven't missed my Insights much since I bought the Volt. They were a lot of fun while I had them, though

Of course I still see my first Insight Turtle at work every day since my son owns it, and there's still a Festiva in my driveway (although it isn't Black Widow, which is actually sitting at my neighbor's house). And I'm pretty sure I saw my second Insight Ron Burgundy over in Orlando a couple of months ago.

[brucepick]

Originally Posted by Natalya

So the battery seems to be working fine, but my problem is my driving never allows it to get charged, so I still gotta use clutch switch to keep it from assisting. It's just hanging out at 3 bars because when hypermiling I you know try to not accelerate more than I need to. I'm the slowest car on the road, hanging out in the right lane. FCD right now for current tank says 3.1 l/100km with 145km on the tank. That's like 90 miles at over 70mpg for the Americans in here. I don't ever DFCO + regen because I'll just use EFAS and EoC instead of letting the car regen. I guess for hypermiling not having a battery is better.

I went through similar mental logic re. battery use in my Gen 1 Insight, 5-speed standard tranny.

Somewhere, I picked up that the Insight's IMA system is 70% efficient. The item I read had no other qualifying or descriptive information. But if true, that reminds us that while capturing braking energy (or whatever you'd like to call it) is better than wasting it into heat, it's NOT a perfect system. Zooming forward with assist, and then braking with regen, is not going to preserve all the energy lost in the braking process. Even if the 70% figure is not fully accurate, I'm certain the concept is correct. The IMA system can't possibly be 100% efficient.

I noticed that normal driving, with assist and regen enabled, basically runs down the battery until it's low enough that the car decides to put a priority on regen. Then, it charges until it gets up to maybe 2-3 bars from max. Even if you're climbing a hill. That's crazy.

I brought that up on InsightCentral[dot]net, and the response was - that's typical for Insights. It's not optimum but it's typical. I'm convinced it is BAD for the IMA battery.

I made several changes to my driving, over a few months time. In sequence -

I put in a dash-mounted voltmeter to show me the voltage to the battery cooling fan. I theorize that insufficient cooling helps to kill these batteries. Knowledge is power.

I put in a switch to power the IMA cooling fan. Now I ALWAYS have the fan running if it is doing assist or regen.

NOTES on fan wiring: My fan projects connected to the same fan wires that are used in a DIY grid charger, when powering the fan externally. The OEM fan setup has two wires. One has 12V when ignition is on. The other grounds the fan via a relay, when the computer decides to run the fan. It can be grounded via either of two relays, depending if the computer wants high or low speed cooling. IIRC, the blue one is hot and the black goes to ground. But you'd need to cut one of the two, to test conclusively to see which is which. You could pull the wire pair off the connector that's behind the passenger seat and probe there - but it's a tough spot to see into.

Discussions on IC showed my IMA battery was on its way out, and as a 2.25 year old Bumblebee, it was still under warranty. Installed replacement from BBB. Owner there (Eli) let me know that this new battery will run the fan on low speed whenever ignition is on. And it's true.

Granted, having a new battery makes things better and easier, but I'm committed to taking the best possible care of this one.

My fan switch still works - and runs the fan on high speed when I activate the switch. So I have a choice of two speeds, hi and low. "Off" isn't really available any more, if the ignition is on.

I aggressively PREVENT the IMA from being used, by means of my clutch switch. I also have a brake switch that forces regen. Also a kill switch.

I simply refuse to allow assist in most situations. If I need to use 4th or even 3rd to maintain highway speed on an upgrade, so be it. I have many upgrades that are between 1/4 mile and a mile. Sometimes longer. Using assist for a long stretch like that will only drain down the battery, and I'll need to charge it up again soon. Charging is the problem. Stopping for lights and stop signs isn't enough to restore it near full, if charge level has been reduced by hill climbing or by accelerating for traffic.

Now, I mostly keep the battery at one bar below max. Sometimes two. But if it gets to two bars below max, I find or create opportunities for regen. Longish downhills are nice for that. BUT remember, I'm running the fan. A long regen builds heat, just like a long assist does. And, per recommendations from Eli and another person at IC, I avoid long regens at full regen rate. Even with the fan on, that probably creates too much heat.

There's an entire additional discussion to be had on grid charging and deep discharging. I'll avoid huge detail on that now - partially because others know more than I do. But...

Charging should go until you see the pack LOSING voltage slightly but consistently, over maybe a 30 minute period. My pack took 8 hours to get there. I've read it can take 24 hours. I have the same red multitester visible in the photo here - but I don't use it for charging. Make sure you can read hundredths of a volt. If you discharge or deep discharge, it should be done with about a 25 watt bulb. Those high-wattage bulbs you have will only do damage, I fear. They're OK for a short while, till pack voltage comes down to maybe 80V. Then you need to go slower, with a 25W bulb.

[Natalya]

@brucepick:
See, a Bumblebee battery or Linsight, they sound really appealing, but if you're saying you're barely even using your BB battery because of EOC and Dw/oB strategies, then like what's the point of the IMA if one is trying to super hypermile? My personal best tank, at 78 MPG, was done without IMA assist because the battery was basically dead.

When I get another G1, I might just do the IMA bypass with an Arduino sending fake signals to the ECM so the car thinks the battery is there. That way I can still use one of my Auto-Stop chips for EOC and then I'll be saving 40 pounds. I did kinda like using the full-regen brake switch I had when going down hills though... but that's something I can live without. Then again, having the power of an IMA might be nice. But do we do damage to the IMA by giving it such a light duty cycle?

[Ecky]

I don't think so? The batteries can develop a memory which changes how much capacity they have at various voltage levels, but to my knowledge that's easily "reset" with a deep discharge.

[cowmeat]

Mine ended up being just too much work to hypermile in after I idiotically killed the IMA by falling asleep while discharging with twin 200 watt bulbs and leaving it discharging for like 10 or 12 hours.

The Insight without the IMA assist feels like you're always driving around two or three gears too high, and if you want AC on it's like you pulled the e-brake