Any way to charge my IMA battery while I'm sleeping?
 

I would really like to be able to charge my IMA (slowly) while I sleep, so that way it doesn't drag on me trying to charge on my drive to work. Is there anyway to do this without damaging the battery?

Yep, a grid charger. Someone was just in the process (and I believe just finished up) of building one. I forget who it was... EVERYONE BUT ME HAS A 1ST GEN INSIGHT NOW! :)

I read grid charging a battery too much is bad for it. Although idk in my case, as I would never get a full charge, or even if so, it wouldn't be very often.

Yeah? And I've read that there are fairies at the bottom of the garden :-)

Seriously, why would a properly-designed grid charger do anything to the batteries that charging from the car wouldn't do? Electrons are electrons: if a grid charger's input current is the same voltage & amps as the IMA produces, the battery has no way to distinguish between the two.

But grid chargers generally charge the battery to 100%, which is bad. If you modified the maximum voltage to charge it to about 80% SOC, you should be fine.

Charging the battery to 80% or so is fine. That should take a few hours even at 350 ma. You can make a solar charger to do that or something with a battery pack. Effects would be limited to afew miles before the extra energy stored wears off. The health of your starter battery is equally as important and precharging it helps too for a few miles before that benefit wears off.

What helps the most is to build a grid charger and leave it on the car for a few days to "balance" all the cells in the pack. You do this til the voltage stabilizes. Some even go a step further and drain the pack, then charge it for several cycles.

Question is, are you having any problems. The true secret to mpg is to not use any of the ima system and abuse the lean burn most of those vehicles are equipped with. Issues with the o2 sensor, egr, map, vacuum leaks, etc cause issues with lean burn and 90% of your fuel economy.

Only problem I have right now, is the EGR system is completely clogged up. Horrible HORRIBLE herky jerky when trying to get into L/B so I have the EGR unplugged right now. I have an exhaust leak, which I plan to fix very soon. Other then that and having oversized tires, no. Mine does have L/B btw. And the battery hasn't seen a full charge since I bought it, I don't know how well the previous owner took care of this car, although by looking at the interior I would say he didn't whatsoever.

My main reason for wanting to do this is, my commute to work and back is only 5 miles each way, and I'm sure I could keep the battery topped off if I could just get it to full. Considering I drive ALL city, it's hard for me to get the battery fully charged without killing my MPG.

[Edit]: I'm already getting 60mpg in the city, I'm gonna post a thread about it in a minute.

[Edit edit]: I plan on buying this grid charger. I know I could build my own for a lot cheaper but eh, I would just rather buy a well built one that is easy to set up.

You can force charge the battery by revving over 3000 in neutral. Anything under 19 bars out of 20 and the battery will background charge(not seen) . Your best bet is to install a calpod/clutch switch to keep the battery from assisting and or background charging

Wait so what I understand from the calpod, could I wire a switch I had (toggleable, kinda like a light switch) to just run it through that, then into the calpod again? I'm really confused on how to do this properly and google turned up no results on how to properly install one.

5 miles?!?!?!? Hell Yeah the grid charger will give you wicked mpg even without lean burn. Since it wouldnt draw much power you could power it with an inverter and deep cycle battery to charge while at work. :thumbup: