I just got a letter in the mail from Honda, they are extending the IMA Battery to 10 years or 150K. They are also suggesting Insight Owners have Honda run a diagnostic of the IMA module that might need updating. According to the letter it will change the charging routine and the amount it charges the battery.



Ryan

 

Ryan,

Do you know if the warranty extention is for a particular year, or for all Insights? Thanks

 

It looks like the letter is for 2000 - 2004 Insights.

 

Ryan - Yes, I saw a copy of the letter posted somewhere on the net after reading your message. It is for 00-04. Hopefully that means they have more faith in the batteries for the later models. Thanks, John

 

I know this is a very old string, but does anyone have current (2009) news concerning Hinda hybrid battery warranties? What was the outcome of the "extended warranty" that these guys are talking about? I ended up rebuilding my own pack with junk yard battery "sticks" from crashed HCH's. It was a lot cheaper than the thieving dealers wanted and Honda America was totally useless to me. How about some of you tell you battery stories here?

 

Mike. Did you do the battery pack stick change yourself? Are you a electrician? How many cells were bad in your pack? Hal

 

Hi Hal,

I have 6 poorly performing sticks out of 20 in the pack. I have not replaced them just yet. I found a deal at a junk yard pretty far from me but the guy makes a parts run my way a few times a month and will be bringing me pack. I also want to see how the rebalancing of the whole pack effects the bad sticks first. I never blindly trust other peoples stories on how these things work (LOL).

So far the pack (with the questionable sticks) is noticably better since the tear down and reassembly last month. MPG is consistantly over 48mpg now and the car is much more "peppy." But the pack still runs down after about 20 minutes of hills and fails to recharge all the way by engine power alone.

I figured this would happen so during the rebuilding last month I also built a whole pack charger of my own to "top off" the pack when I come home for the night. It's just a 120:48 volt transformer I reversed the primary for the secondary windings and added a bridge rectifier and capacitor to, very simple. Add a lamp timer to turn it off automatically after a few hours. It charges at about 1 amp and gives me a totally full pack in about 4 hours as long as the dashboard indicator is only about 5 bars low. I can tell when the cells are really full by a slight temperature increase on the poor sticks, which I placed them near the base of the battery holder so I can touch the sides of them to see how warm they are compared to the other cells as the charging comes to an end. If they are still cool-ish I turn on the charger for a little more time.

The external charger is especially important to me since Honda's battery controller only allows the pack to charge to 80% or so but indicates a full charge on the dash gauge.

I do all my own maintenance (just naturally cheap I guess). I also have considerable electrical experience. But really anyone could do this type of work as long as you are careful and have a multimeter to test for hot things. Aside from that, all you need is a 10mm socket and a phillips screwdriver, and of course, the time and will to do it.

 

Thanks Mike. I would love to do what you are doing, but I hate electrical stuff. And my car is too new yet.[2006] Anyway It sounds like you have a car you enjoy! Hal

 

Mike- I hope you read over at Insight Central. Much more technical info, and more recent threads.

Just so everyone knows, the battery "charge level" lights on the Gen I Insight don't tell you much of anything about the real charge of the battery. It was more or less a consumer 'gimick' and should not be trusted. It also gets less and less useful as the car ages. In a new car you can have 4000 watt-hours of charge and the lights go top to bottom. In an old car, you can have 400 watt-hours and the lights still go top to bottom.

It's not a "smart" display.

 

Hi Hal and gpsman, I am indeed having fun with all the tinkering. I am even thinking on buying an old Insight to add to my collection of toys.

I know about the SOC indicator issues. I have a way to compensate for it by disconnecting the 12v battery and fully charging the pack with my external charger and then reconnecting everything. After that, if I rev and hold the engine at 3500 for a couple of minutes the computer "re-learns" the real pack SOC (I read this in the Honda Service manual.) After that the SOC indicator stays in a more useful range as long as I recharge the batteries each night to full again. This keeps computer recals from happening too. Of course it works a lot better when all the cells are working right. My 6 weak ones are a problem that are soon to be corrected.

Something to keep in mind as your car ages Hal. The batteries in this Civic of mine was going bad in less than 5 years, Honda was useless for help since they will only replace the whole pack, and they will not do that unless it fails big time inside of 100,000 miles! All they seem to want to do before that is "update" the computer to fool it into thinking "all is well" when the pack is getting farther and farther from "well" everyday the car is in use. I read at a MiMH battery related website that NiMh cells should be deep cycled about 3 to 4 times a year to keep memory problems from getting bad. Honda does not do this with their built in recals. A recal only looks like a deep cycle. It is more like a software adjustment that lets the pack look good as it gets out of balance.

I have read a lot of the stuff at Insight Central too. In fact, I cruised all of it before even considering buying the Civic. So far it's been a "mixed bag" of fun since I haven't needed to spend a lot of money yet (besides the 5k I spent on the Civic to buy it.) Still think I paid too much for it. But I was also helping out a buddy who was moving to Europe, and I will be living with them for an extended vacation next year. Something of a pay-back! LOL