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

[discovery]

Originally Posted by Formula413

Can anyone clarify the definition of P1449? I have seen P1449 referred to as "battery pack degradation" and "battery pack overheat". Would repairs for either condition be similar?

I think P1449 means that inside the battery pack one sticks is overheating during charging compare to the rest of the battery sticks. There are several heat sensors in the battery pack monitoring that. According to Robert you have to take the the HV battery pack out and charge and discharge every single stick individualy. Come back after a week and compare the voltage. The weak ones are the ones that did not discharge much. Replace that one with a new one and you should be good for another 3-5 years.

[RobertSmalls]

According to the Advanced DTC Troubleshooting .pdf, there are four possible meanings of P1449 for the Insight:

DTC P1449 (72): Battery Module Overheating
DTC P1449 (73): Battery Cell Overheating
DTC P1449 (74): Battery Module Individual Voltage Input Deviation
DTC P1449 (78): Battery Module Deterioration

Representing a few different failure determination schemes for the battery pack. It doesn't much matter which one you have, as they can all be consequences of an imbalanced pack, and your response will be the same. See if it responds to a long soak on a grid charger, do a DIY refurb, or buy a refurbished battery.

[discovery]

Originally Posted by RobertSmalls;

You many be wondering what settings to use on the Super Brain 989. You want to go as fast as you can without overheating the cells, so I chose 7A charge, 10A discharge, and I didn't need to run the battery fan, with ambient temperature at 62°F. The Insight's cells are 6500mAh nominal, I used 5mV per cell peak detection, and 0.9VPC cutoff.

I just got mine Super Brain 989 charger and I have some questions regarding settings charge/discharge.

At CHARGE state:

Battery Type NiMH
Battery # of Cells 6 Cell
Charge at mAh ????? ( I guess 6500 mAh)
Amp 7.00
Cut Off Peak mV 5 mV
Cut Off Temperature ?????
Trickle ?????

At DISCHARGE state:

Battery Type NiMN
Battery # of Cells 6 Cell
Charge at mAh ?????
Amp 10.00
Cut Off Peak mV 0.9 V
Cut Off Temperature ?????
Trickle ?????

I should do 4 cycles charge/discharge per cell with 15 min. pause between cycles, is that correct?
How long do I charge and how long do I discharge?

[RobertSmalls]

Cutoff temperature: it reads the little probe that comes with the SB989. The probe can't reach most of the cells, so you're running blind. How about 40°C to play it very safe? Temperature won't damage a cell (much, I think) until it approaches 100°C, but you can't measure every cell.

Trickle is how many mA you want after charge termination. Since the first thing you're going to do is fully charge each stick, then give it a long, slow 0.3A trickle charge, the "trickle" feature doesn't really apply here.

You may have noticed your sticks are longer than the red and black leads they supplied, and that their little gator clips are designed with smaller batteries in mind. The red and black leads are on screw terminals for a reason.

Charge and discharge until you reach the cutoff conditions. 0.9V on the way down, 0.05V less than the highest voltage observed on the way up.

You can go with a full 10A of charge, if you can keep your sticks cool. Running the pack's 12V, 120mm fan isn't the worst idea in the world.

[discovery]

You can go with a full 10A of charge, if you can keep your sticks cool. Running the pack's 12V, 120mm fan isn't the worst idea in the world.

I'll try running 7A for charging as you recomended and 10A for discharging. What amount of mAh should i put in the charger before i start a cycle? 6500 mAh?

[RobertSmalls]

Yep.

[RobertSmalls]

Originally Posted by sdnomad

Would a dealer use a grid charger? Where does a person get a grid charger without having to build one?

Also, would the super brain 989 work on a 06 civic hybrid? I saw in the thread you recommended someone stated that the civic has 12 cells. And if they are lithium, the super brain 989 states it works on 1-8 lithium cells or 1-25NiCd

The dealer would buy a refurbished battery from Honda, swap them out, and send yours back to Honda. They don't know anything about grid chargers. AFAIK, the Honda techs don't have to know anything about battery failure modes and repair, either.

The only person who's making grid chargers for sale at the moment is ArtRic on InsightCentral.net.

The 06 Civic uses 12-cell sticks of NiMH, and the SB 989 can handle up to 24 cells at once. There's a little more guesswork as to what's going on when you're reading 12 cells at once instead of just 6, but it should still get the job done.

[Artric]

Hi Guys,

Robert invited me to post over here a little while ago (it's been on my to-do list... oops!).

Anyway, I've built my own 350ma charger based on Mike Dabrowski's initial design and have also put together a booster charger that adds 1.05A to the mix for a 1.4A charge (mostly full battery in around four hours). I've been grid charging constantly and not letting the car do the work by wasting gas with a background charge, and it's done wonders for my gas mileage.

But anyway, we're talking about fixing batteries here, not hypermiling. I've sold a handful of 350ma chargers, and will have a few more for sale at the very end of the year or very beginning of 2011 (after the parts came off of a two month backorder from Jameco).

When I did the list of all the parts one would need a while back, I came up with about $130. This assumes that you don't already have any parts to use, but have the basic tools necessary to put it together. It also assumes that you have a plan for housing the charger and providing AC current.

In my case, I found that computer power supplies make great donor cases for this purpose. The five total power supplies fit inside perfectly (though cases will vary), there is normally a fan that can be used in tandem with the 12v power supply to keep the entire unit cool (which is not necessary most of the year, and you shouldn't be charging in the sun anyway), plus it has a receptacle for a universal 120VAC cable and usually a power switch too!

After assembling my own and working with a couple of other members by request, I lost my job, got into a fight for unemployment from my last job and needed to make ends meet, so I started selling them.

I've sold around a dozen now (I'm just one guy, not a shop). I'm not a professional engineer like Mike D., but I've tinkered with electronics much more delicate and difficult for a number of years. I've basically assembled a ready-to-install kit, and you can see the details of it on my pictoral walkthrough on flickr: Grid Charger Install - a set on Flickr

You can also get a look at what the first batch ended up looking like here (note the variance due to differences in case design, and I also had to work with some slightly different components due to the component back-order crisis): Grid Chargers - a set on Flickr

Mine has been treating me quite well, very often charging more than once per day. As for the chargers I've sold, I have a lot of happy customers, and have ran into a few problems that have all been rectified.

One person bought a charger specifically because he was getting the battery degradation code. I let him know that there was no guarantee that it would fix the problem this simply, but he was lucky and ecstatic to see that it did! I haven't heard otherwise, so I assume it is at minimum acting as a very strong band-aid to keep that battery going.

Because I'm an honest guy, I'll mention that the problems that I've run into were in at least one case my fault. I inadvertently switched the low and high voltage cables around at the molex connector, but luckily, it was rectified at no charge to them, and nothing was damaged. Overall though, people have been happy and it's been a success.

I'm going to be putting together around ten more units shortly. The parts should be arriving soon. A few are already spoken for and a number of people are interested. I'm not sure that I'm going to be staying in the business, as Mike D's units should be hitting the market soon, and I hope to be able to concentrate my time toward more financially-stable alternatives (i.e. get a job).

I also plan on putting together a step by step walkthrough for assembling them with my process shortly. I'll be allowing open discussion with the community, so everyone can put their two cents in, and in the end, the best and safest instructions will be out there to help anyone who needs help visualizing the concepts to be able to assemble their own charger.

I don't mean to come here to just sell my wares, as I only began making a profit to make ends meet (otherwise, my mortgage wouldn't have been paid), and am most interested in giving back to the community, so others can experience the joy that I do with getting ridiculously high MPG!

But if you are interested, or even if you're putting your own together and just have questions, feel free to reach out to me.

I mainly come here to update my MPG chart, so it might be best to drop me a PM on InsightCentral or email me. My address is the same as this username (artric) plus @gmail.com.

Good luck everyone! Keep us updated on any junkyard finds and how they work out. I plan on getting an extra battery and going parallel when the time and money is right. The more I can learn from you guys, the better!

Art

[discovery]

Originally Posted by Artric

When I did the list of all the parts one would need a while back, I came up with about $130. This assumes that you don't already have any parts to use, but have the basic tools necessary to put it together. It also assumes that you have a plan for housing the charger and providing AC current..........

So how much are you asking for the charger?

[Artric]

I'm currently selling them for $265 including shipping in the US. I have parts left for a few more... It's pretty time intensive and I have a lot of things on my plate right now, so I'm not sure if I'll be doing another run in the near future, if at all. I need to spend more time finding a nice desk job where I can make a lot more per hour and not have the liability.

Mike Dabrowski's chargers should be coming out any time now. They'll be around two times as much, but they'll have some neat features and are likely to be more of a "polished" product.

Hopefully things will cool down and this can become more of a "labor of love" again. I'm hoping to get some help in documenting the build process step-by-step before the end of this run, so anyone with screwdriver/drill/crimping skills and some common sense can make their own. Or maybe someone else will take over - that's how capitalism works, right?

Guess that's the long answer.

Don't mean to sound like a sourpuss - these chargers helped me make mortgage when my job tried to screw me out of unemployment. But now I'm getting back on my feet and need to focus on new things (focus being the most difficult thing in the world for me sometimes).

Thanks for the inquiry!