I am enjoying just lurking for now...here's the scoop: I did find two local hybrid shops and spoke with the owners of each. Both of them said they don't do grid charging, and are not sure it's worth the trouble and expense.
I also checked online for other areas, and found a franchiser of hybrid shops--sorry, the link is on my office computer--the nearest to me was in northern CA--and they listed something like $1200(!!) to check out and balance a battery. I have not yet discussed with my local battery people, Bumblebee, but still may chat with them. (Even though one would think they'd want to hurry the death of a battery, they seem instead to want to delay that, at least based on my past contact with me.)
Both 07ch and S Keith have me sold. I just need to find the time and ambition to do the job, whether through a home-built unit or ready-made. If my battery will last another 18 months or so, I'll be semi-retired and working part-time, and may just be playing Dr. Frankenstein with my battery.
One more basic comment to 07ch's comments: it's long struck me that even being able to do feed some charge into the battery, even without balancing it, is a way to make my HCH into a partial plug-in hybrid.

 

Bummer that no one offers that service. It would be a quick $100 and get many thru emissions and to have a little life breathed back into their cars.

I would steer clear of anyone offering refurb or rebalance services. Your best bet for performance is replacement.

Lastly, the battery capacity of the HCH is woefully inadequate to be considered anything even remotely barely hardly similar to a Plug-in. Repeated charges to 100% to simulate plug-in operation will trash your battery in 50 or so charges.

 

As always, my thanks...I definitely intend to follow through on this...

 

Here you go, not using the RS-25-12 because I don't plan on powering the fan anytime soon, when I do I'll probably throw an Arduino or something into the mix to properly PWM it...

 

Looks right as long as 20151116_173700 is going to the battery. You might want to swap so it's black/black and red/white, so that black is the negative at the battery.

My thoughts exactly on the arduino.

 

I went black to white because white is your "negative" normally I'm gonna use the other extension cable to hook to the battery, so it'll be battery -> extension cable -> extension cable -> power supplies -> extension cable -> mains

 

Ah. Win.

Just double and triple check your polarity...

 

Well, I dun goofed, hopefully not tragically so..

Wired up good I assume, plugged up, no fire (of course I checked polarity and it was good before plugging up)

Then I went to check voltage across the terminals, and popped twice, really really hope shorting the terminals didn't destroy the battery

 

I'm not sure I understand what happened. Did you have your DVM set for current? Can you elaborate? Checking voltage at the main terminals will get you zero volts unless the 12V relay is energized. YOu have to check at the relay terminal, which is where your grid charger should be connected.

It would have to be the mother of all pops to actually damage the battery, but you might have blown a fuse on the junction board.

did you weld anything with the sparks?

 

Multimeter was set to voltage... I'm not sure I understand where I'm supposed to be wired in at then, I have my leads going to the + and - terminals on the battery pack, the same ones that the car is wired to

Put my lead to those terminals and got the pops, I have a little pitting on the terminal bolts, and blackened them a tiny bit as well as the DMM leads, but nothing stuck