Civic hybrid 1st gen IMA won't recognize new battery

[S Keith]

If the IMA light is out, the car recognizes the battery. The BCM just has no idea of its state of charge as resting voltage does not correlate to state of charge, so it shows zero. If the IMA light is still on, you have other problems.

There are no issues with shoving a fully charged pack in a car. If you can, it's best to let the voltage stabilize over 30-60 minutes (maybe overnight), but two weeks is excessive.

Disconnect 12V for 30 seconds. Reconnect. Start and rev to 3500rpm and hold until you read full bars. You will need to drive it as you will show DTC not ready when you go to emissions, which will be the case no matter how you reset the codes.

Given the atrocious state of imbalance your as-removed testing showed, I expect any improvement will be temporary and you will need regular grid charging/discharging.

Did you confirm the sticks could sustain a 100A load for 10 seconds and remain above 5.4V?

NiMH voltages don't mean a lot. They can give indications, but there is no objective relationship due to other variables.

You have already invested a lot of time in this project. I have done the same over 2 HCH1 packs and 6 HCH2 packs. If you want to maximize the value for your efforts, next time you are looking to re-balance your pack, do it over a weekend with pack grid charging and deep discharging to < 1V (yes, 1V for the entire pack) with 2X 100W bulbs in series. Yes, you will reverse most of the cells. No, it won't hurt them (will happen at current under 1A). Yes, you have already reversed at least 1 cell per stick at far higher current when discharging to 0.8V/cell. I have watched it happen at even lower currents. The speed of weak cell depletion and polarity reversal under high/medium load when discharging to <1V/cell is astounding.

There is a mountain of evidence of others (including me) that have done this with very favorable results. My capacity recovery has been 20-25% for a given load without exception.

Here is a before and after comparison between 2 discharges to 132V on HCH2 packs. First one is following a topping grid charge to peak voltage at 350mA. The discharge was continued to under 2V followed by a topping grid charge to peak voltage at 350mA. The second data set is the same discharge (500W halogen) to 1V/cell:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

[S Keith]

Elaboration to help you understand why resting voltages and pack SoC as-removed vs. as-installed doesn't matter much.

The pack monitors 11 voltages: 1 total and 10 stick pairs. It also monitors current.

When assisting, for a given current, the voltages must remain above minimums. These voltages vary with current. When regenerating, for a given current, the voltages must remain below maximums. SoC is computed based on this range of operation and iteratively adjusted. It doesn't mean a lot.

At the end of a positive recal, 100% SoC indicates ONE of the 11 voltages hit max at the charge current.

At the end of a negative recal, 0% or near 0% SoC indicates ONE of the 11 voltages hit min at a given discharge current. Additionally, if any of the 10 stick-pairs deviate by 1.2 volts at any time, it triggers a recal. As long as your stick pairs are within 1.2V, they really don't matter.

[retired paul]

I just refurbished an IMA battery for my 2003 civic hybrid. Upon installing it in my car I have the same two codes present: PP1637 and P1569.
Also, the IMA and BATTERY lights are on. If I rev the engine the BATTERY light goes out, which I am aware will happen. The bars of charge are full. We took the car for a ride up a long hill that should have depleted the battery and then refilled it on the way back down. But the car appeared not to recognize the battery because the level of charge never changed and there was no assist.
This battery also had a modification to it that I noticed when dissassembling it. Upon taking off the end where the electronics are attached, I noticed one of the orange wires was no longer connected to a PTC strip. It appeared it was cut. Thinking this was done by a previous owner we reconnected it. I now know that this cut wire was a technical buletin update to the battery so will disconnect later today.

Does anyone have any ideas on why my system did not recognize the refurbished battery? The only other info I can think of sharing right now is that the battery went into the car right after the final top off of each stick. So it went in at 168Volts. I also swapped in around 10 sticks from another battery I recently purchased. All sticks were individually discharged and charged several times prior to assembly.

[S Keith]

Originally Posted by retired paul

I just refurbished an IMA battery for my 2003 civic hybrid. Upon installing it in my car I have the same two codes present: PP1637 and P1569.
Also, the IMA and BATTERY lights are on. If I rev the engine the BATTERY light goes out, which I am aware will happen. The bars of charge are full. We took the car for a ride up a long hill that should have depleted the battery and then refilled it on the way back down. But the car appeared not to recognize the battery because the level of charge never changed and there was no assist.
This battery also had a modification to it that I noticed when dissassembling it. Upon taking off the end where the electronics are attached, I noticed one of the orange wires was no longer connected to a PTC strip. It appeared it was cut. Thinking this was done by a previous owner we reconnected it. I now know that this cut wire was a technical buletin update to the battery so will disconnect later today.

Does anyone have any ideas on why my system did not recognize the refurbished battery? The only other info I can think of sharing right now is that the battery went into the car right after the final top off of each stick. So it went in at 168Volts. I also swapped in around 10 sticks from another battery I recently purchased. All sticks were individually discharged and charged several times prior to assembly.

Report back after you restore that wire to the as-removed condition. PTC strips were eliminated sometime in '04 and BCMs were patched. A patched BCM will not work correctly if the PTC circuit is present, and an unpatched BCM will not work correctly if the PTC circuit is not present or is not correctly spoofed.

[JETCRX]

Hello, new guy here. I bought a 2004 civic hybrid with rocketship milleage of 244,375 miles. The IMA and check engine light would come on even after resets with code p1433 battery deterioration. I bought a grid charger and canrged it several times to a peak of 179 volts, which I thought is was high but I don't know. The grid charging helped but when it came time for the battery to discharge and recharge in use the p1433 code would pop up.
I bought a "good" battery from the salvage yard and after installing it I would get an instant IMA light and I could hear the relays witching off. Code P1432 (Cell overheating '04) and code P1433 ( battery pack deteriotation) plus the mandatory check engine 01600.

I took out the "good" battery and set it to the side. but after reading this thread I figure it may have something to do with the cut wires but don't know.

The previous owner had cats and dogs and a blanket of fur formed in the upper row of sticks the original battery so I figure I'd clean it and put it back in since it still charges and assists with the IMA light on and still helps get 38.7 mpgs

With some luck the P1433 was the battery not geting enough air flow. I'll find out when I drive it tomorow.

[California98Civic]

Originally Posted by JETCRX

Hello, new guy here. I bought a 2004 civic hybrid with rocketship milleage of 244,375 miles. The IMA and check engine light would come on even after resets with code p1433 battery deterioration. I bought a grid charger and canrged it several times to a peak of 179 volts, which I thought is was high but I don't know. The grid charging helped but when it came time for the battery to discharge and recharge in use the p1433 code would pop up.
I bought a "good" battery from the salvage yard and after installing it I would get an instant IMA light and I could hear the relays witching off. Code P1432 (Cell overheating '04) and code P1433 ( battery pack deteriotation) plus the mandatory check engine 01600.

I took out the "good" battery and set it to the side. but after reading this thread I figure it may have something to do with the cut wires but don't know.

The previous owner had cats and dogs and a blanket of fur formed in the upper row of sticks the original battery so I figure I'd clean it and put it back in since it still charges and assists with the IMA light on and still helps get 38.7 mpgs

With some luck the P1433 was the battery not geting enough air flow. I'll find out when I drive it tomorow.

Maybe what you need is a way to get into more granular data. The battery is really a pack of batteries. Some in your old pack might have gone bad, and others in the replacement pack. So you need a scan tool that can measure the health of each of the cells. Once you know which are failing, if the battery chemistry is the same, you might be able to build your own "new battery out of the good cells in each pack. Here is a relecant link: https://www.scantool.net/forum/index...;topic=10442.0

I don't know if such a scan tool exists for an old car like a 2004 Civic Hybrind, but this is what one example looks like for the Leaf:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DdEyjjt52kU

Of course the failure coukd be something else... don't mistake me for an experienced expert. I'm just a guy on a bulletin board tryna help a little. Good luck.

james

[retired paul]

Hi S Keith. Thanks for replying. Here is my updated information. I disconnected the red wire that I had originally found 'cut'. I put the battery back into the car. Upon starting the car there were no lights - no BAT light, no IMA light and no CEL. I let the car idle until the SoC meter was full. I then took the car for a drive. As soon as I called for assist, the CEL and IMA lights came on together. The BAT light did not come back on during my 1/2 hour drive. When I drove, it took the car up a hill and back down twice. Each round trip drained the IMA battery going up and filled it going down. However, I noticed on those round trips, and while driving around town afterwoods, that there was a behavior difference in how the system worked. There really was no assist, as I never saw much on the gauge and could only occasionally perhaps feel the extra umph. Also there was no regenerative braking. Whenever the charge lights would show bars, it was never more than 5. Even when braking going downhill on the hill I spoke of earlier. Finally, the SoC bars would go down and up even though there was no call for assist or for reason to charge. IT would be a slow motion type thing but was occurring.
The good news is that the BAT light is out. Makes it easier to test drive! Next I brought in the Honda Dealer for a discussion. I am curious as to whether the car needs a computer flash. Oh, by the way, the codes I now have are P1600 and P1449. So they changed after disconnecting the red wire from the PTC strips.
Anyway, the dealer said he would be willing to flash the computer. Since I have the carfax from when I bought the car, I checked it to see if the computer had ever been flashed before. There is no record of such an update. The dealer said he would need information regarding what battery I put in the car - such as the year of civic the battery came from, because there were a number of updates to the software. There would be a cost for flashing and he wanted to get the right version of the software so he did not have to charge for a lot of hours.
I explained that I had used the original case from our car but may have put a cover on it from another donor battery. He asked if I would be willing to put the original cover on and I agreed. I also am going to drive the car some more and wait for your reply to see if you have ideas on eliminating the two codes or if you think the flash of the computer is the path to go down.

[S Keith]

The computer has been flashed. You confirmed this when you found the the cut PTC circuit upon battery removal. You re-confirmed it when you installed the pack with the circuit restored and related errors were shown. And you re-confirmed it one more time when you restored the PTC circuit to its as-removed state and related codes went away.

P1449 is a failed battery pack. You did not successfully recondition your pack. Unfortunately, too many people are duped into believing this is an easy and usually successful exercise when it usually isn't. Most "reconditioning" descriptions are woefully inadequate to establish that sticks will perform in the car.

Steve

[retired paul]

Sounds like I do not need a flash done so I save the 90 dollars there.
Also sounds like I would be wasting time if I try to refurb the cells again. I now have 3 packs and 60 sticks, although some are obviously no good.

Do you suggest dropping the refurb path and purchasing a new battery? The car itself is is very good condition. 90K miles, 5 speed, new brakes and new struts. Really is not a lot more that can go wrong with it. It is more a matter of biting off a $3000. investment in a car that might be worth $4,000.

[S Keith]

I would expect a collection of 3 packs could be used to make a single good one, but it's a lengthy process.

If you decide to go new, do NOT buy Honda. Check out Bumblebee Batteries.