DIY Solutions to Honda Hybrid Battery Problems (Insight, Civic, IMA)

[Formula413]

If you could post some pics of the battery we might be able to at least determine if the setup is similar to an Insight/Civic pack.

[msantimanzano]

Yea, I looked over there...and striking out. Seen 2 people who seemingly had threads that they were doing grid charging on the HAH as well as battery stick balancing, they setup for photos etc. but their links are dead and all of the information is gone. If I could start with getting dang specs for the battery pack...it would give me a starting point.

Once I have the battery pack in hand and I open it up, is the information I am seeking obtainable from the actual battery cells? In other words, if I come back on the forum and say, ok, I have a total of x individual batteries in each stick. A total of x sticks for the whole battery pack. This is what each stick and cell looks like (and I provide photos) Is that enough information for experienced civic hybrid do it yourselfers to give me some info, like, charge the whole pack at a maximum of x volts, x milliamps, x watts for x amount of time, don't let it get warmer than x temp, discharge the whole pack/cells to no less than x volts, etc etc?

[msantimanzano]

Originally Posted by Formula413

If you could post some pics of the battery we might be able to at least determine if the setup is similar to an Insight/Civic pack.

As soon as I get my delivery, I will start taking good quality descriptive photographs and photobucketing them to post on here. I am very good at following directions, so I am confident that with the experience many of you have with the same situation on the civic, alot of that will likely transfer to the Accord.

[msantimanzano]

Well, no delivery of the battery pack, but I had to remove my rear seats yesterday to start preparing replacement of my rear struts. I went ahead and took a photo of the battery pack since the seats were off.

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Estimated delivery of the battery pack is 4/23....anxious to start this process already. Cleared my IMA and check engine light yesterday. Was able to drive 120 miles before the lights came back on. The moment I cleared them, my car started going into ECO mode with frequency, assist was working fine, etc. I am so very hopeful that I will be successful in keeping the light away and restoring my fuel economy.

[Formula413]

What you're looking at is the cover for the battery compartment. On a Civic you remove the little cover where it says "on-off" and flip the master disconnect to off, and once it is switched off there is a plastic trim fastener next to the switch that must be removed along with all the screws around the edge before the cover can be removed. That is done as a safety measure so that the cover can't be removed with the battery switch in the on position.

[Cobb]

Yes, that would be a good start. The drivers door has a label that tells you the voltage of the system. That would be the nominal voltage assuming 1.2 volts a cell. Fully charge the D sized cells are 1.5 volts and usually 6.5 amp hours. The batteries are welded together in a heat shrink tube and some have a temperature probe tucked inside.

Much like your 6 D cell mag light one bad cell will make it not run as long or as bright. One bad cell in these sticks does the same. Once the capacity is reduced to .65 amp hours is when you get the check engine light. Sounds like you are at this point.

Plan A is to trickle charge the whole back at .350 ma til the voltage stabilizes to rebalance all cells good and bad. You can rig up one with a few meanwell power supplies with the output in series to develop the voltage. The insight website may have someone near you who will help out.

Plan B is to cycle all the sticks with a hobby charger 3-5 times noting the capacity. Most hobby chargers are automatic and you just connect it, set it to nickel metal and press start. Then you match the sticks or pair off the worse with the best.

Use to be you can buy an old pack and have enough from 2 to make 1 solid pack, but the gen 1 used battery packs are all about used up at this point.

The accord maybe more rare?

FYI, once you flip the switch to off under the cover you posted a photo of wait 5 minutes before touching anything. Inside is 3 large capacitors that need to drain and they do so fairly quickly. It uses 3 of them and some other neat parts to give 3 phase dc to the IMA motor and back.

The 4th orange wire is for the dc to dc converter which feeds 12 volts for the charging system.

[msantimanzano]

Alright, so I got the battery pack delivered today. I was going to work on the one that came in, charge it etc., but my anxiousness got the best of me... I instead pulled mine out of my car, and put the delivered one in it's place. I then cleared my IMA and trouble lights, and went for a drive. I drove for 30 miles with the replaced pack. I immediately noticed some differences.

My IMA light etc., did not turn back on.

Assist comes on with frequency (it was no longer really coming on at all with my original battery)

The car goes into ECO mode anytime I am ez and level on the gas...so that is huge, because since my IMA had come on before, no more ECO mode.

Finally, now, when the car goes into autostop at lights etc. the AC continues to blow cold..where as before, when autostop kicked in....it just went from cold air, to blowing warm ambient air.

So, I am feeling good for now, that the battery I got from salvage, is deff doing better than mine was.

Now, I started to take my battery apart. I am in the process right now of uploading pictures so I can post them here. I only got so far..before I got stuck. I am hoping when I put the pics up, someone may be able to guide me as to how to continue the disassembly process to pull the sticks out.

[msantimanzano]

Here is the pack

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First of 2 connectors between the battery pack and the rest of the IMA larger module

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This is the second connection



This is what the electronics to the battery pack look like

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Now, to open the pack up...I thought I would just remove some screws but..its more involved than that. I found that one side of the packs styrofoam is held in place with 2 black push buttons, of of which you can see in this picture

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I used a screw driver to pop them both off and then the styrofoam cover on this end of the pack, I was able to carefully remove

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Removing the pack from the car was HELL. I thought the pack was just held in with the screws on the front panel. After having removed them all..I was perplexed because the damn thing would not budge. I eventually discovered that the battery pack is actually also held in place, thru 2 bolts that go into the trunk area...and I had to go into my trunk, pull the carpeting, and undo the 2 nuts on the bolts. Here, are the 2 bolts, which go through into the trunk and are held in place there.

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Here I am pointing at 1 of 4 plastic plugs that are covering a nut in each of the 4 locations. I thought these had to be removed, to pull the batteries from inside the pack.

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When I removed them, this is what they look like

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Using a 12mm socket, I removed the nuts

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This is what the end of the pack looks like, with the styrofoam end piece removed

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No matter what I did, I could not remove the top cover from the pack. Even after pulling off the 4 bolts which were holding that cover in place....the cover was stuck in the area of the power connection. I was too scared to pull and left it alone. I then figured out that, if I turned the pack face down I may be able to pull the foam box off the pack.

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Indeed, that worked

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Now where do I go from here in the disassembly process so that I can pull the sticks out to start charging / discharging etc.? Help.

[msantimanzano]

So at like, 3am...I could not sleep...bothered that I could not take the rest of the pack apart...so I went online and was able to find an Accord battery stick photo.....I could see that the end had 4 screw holes....so I went to my battery pack, and realized that I could remove the 2 large bolts, and remove the 2 small screws, and bam....the stick would slide out.

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I checked the voltage of the double stick I removed, by placing my leads here, and this is what I got.

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Should I start a new thread, specific to the Honda Accord Hybrid? I am just worried that maybe no one would chime in there....Here at least, a few of you are looking in and talking to me about this.

[Formula413]

This is all good info. Even if there are no Accord hybrid owners here it's good to document all of this. From what I can see it is a similar setup to the gen1 HCH and Insight, a pack composed of 20 sub packs of 6 cells each for a nominal voltage of 144V. On my pack I had to remove the temperature probes from each sub pack pack to get them out. Those are the small Phillips head screws at the ends of the sub packs. As far as voltage reading it is highly likely that each sub pack will show ~8V, this gives no indication of its condition however. And always be careful removing the terminal bolts from the sub packs, even with the master disconnect switch off there is still high voltage present in some places as long as the junction board is still attached, at least there is on my pack.