Hi Red,

Everybody listen up... I'm no expert here. :-) I'm just a do-it-yourselfer trying to save a buck. I'm not stupid either but I can be naieve. I make mistakes and have made some costly ones.

That said, I've done some homework. I know something about electricity and electronics. I've rebuilt way too many combustion engines to recall how many (mostly Hondas) and know my way around the shop and which end to hold a screwdriver (not the pointy end). I'm a mechanical designer by trade and do alright for an old guy without a college degree. I've dabble in lots of things from sugar based rocket fuel to solar water heating. This is just one more of those things to dabble in.

So thank you Red for your kind words. I appreciate them. I just don't want to sound like someone really smart. No... not me. I've just got a Walmart wallet. I fix things cause I just plain have to. Who's got money these days. I have 3/5's of my family in college or private school. Holy CRAP! :-)

But I also enjoy the challenge.

So... here's the thing. I can't fix a bad battery. Pretty much nobody can. You can kick them around with a bit of electricity and maybe give them a bit more life, but chemistry is chemistry and when they wear out they're pretty much done.

The trick is to find the ones that have or are starting to give up. I'll cull the bad ones and put together a package of good ones. Used yes.... but still good. When I'm finished I do not expect to have a "like new" battery. But I don't think I need a new battery to see a nice improvement. That's what we'll find out together.

I appologise for not getting pictures up yet. I promise to have some for you by weeks end. Big party goings on for my teenage son along with a serious house cleaning. I'll work it in there somewhere.

Regards all,

Ross

 

Subdewd (I like that name). Reminds me of a dog I knew named Phideaux.

I didn't answer your last question...

I am using a charger that allows me to log the cummulative amount of power used to charge and the cummulative amount of power the battery assembly discharges... and do that multiple times un-attended. (That's way too long a sentence) :-)

Put another way, the charger drains the battery assembly and charges the battery assembly three times in a row. While it does, it stores how much power went in and how much came out for each cycle. I can set it up to do up to five cycles at a time. I've chosen three. Three cycles takes between 30 and 35 hours. Yeah... I hear ya!

At the end, I toggle a button on the charger and it numerically displays the power in and the power out for each cycle. I've made a small spread sheet to track those numbers.

When I've cycled through all 22 sticks (battery assemblies), I'll review the numbers to see which ones stand out as being different from the others. The most important numbers are the power out numbers. I want them to be fairly close for each of the battery assemblies.

I know from the numbers that I can expect roughly 5100 miliamp hrs of output from each stick. But I'm not so focused on the output as the balance between all of the sticks.

The Imax B6 charger is a cheap Chinese charger (about $35). It's used by a lot of people to charge their LiPo batteries for their radio controlled gear. But it's not very accurate and most of them know it. But it works well enough and for the price is hard to beat.

I have nine more chargers ordered and my only worry is that between them their accuracy may sway my results a bit. I'm still optimistic that good will be good enough. If I get some numbers from one of them that looks questionable I'll swap it to a known battery assembly and compare the results. Like I said, good will be good enough.

I hope that answers your question. I tend to be long-winded. :-)

Ross

 

Ok... this is a first picture test. Let's see if it works!

 

Hey Ross
Looks like you received more chargers.Do those batteries on the table represent 4 of the 22? They are larger than I figured! Looks like fun. H

 

Ok...

Let's get some pictures up.

So the picture above shows my charging setup. It's not very glamorous. I had visions of battery sticks side by side down a long table with the chargers hooked up side by side. Oh well.

But it's hooked up. I'm cycling eight sticks right now. Well... seven really because one of the chargers I got keeps shutting off. And one more of the chargers has a broken button (not seen in the pictures). And I'm still waiting for two chargers that haven't arrived. :-[

The paper on the table is where I'm collecting my data on the batteries. So far, they've all checked out good. That's encouraging. Either I lucked out and got a good set of batteries or my system of cycling the batteries is not suitable to find issues. I don't think that's the case. We'll see.

My computer is running low on battery power so I'll add more later...

Ross

 

Hi Harold,

Actually that's eight sticks of the 22 total in the battery pack. The sticks are welded together at one end so you could think of them as a single unit of 12 "d" cells in series. That's not how I'm treating them. I'm charging one stick (out of the two) at a time. If I find a bad six cell stick, I plan to cut them apart at the welded tab, replace the bad stick, and silver solder them back together with a penny. Ha! That should do the trick.

Thanks for looking. Yeah... I'm having fun.

Regards,

Ross

 

Here's some more pictures.

The first couple of pictures show the battery pack partially disassembled. You can see how they stack in there. On previous year models, the batteries were individual sticks, not pairs, and their electrodes were bolted from both sides of the pack. On the 2006 thru 2008 models, the electrodes are only bolted on one side (the other side being welded together). I think that was a smart idea, though it makes my job of replacing sticks a bit more difficult (but manageable). There really aren't many of us out there doing this.

The other couple of photos show the welded tab from the top and side. This is where I will cut between the two, to separate them and replace a bad stick. Then I'll silver solder a penny across the cut tabs to put it back together. The penny should handle the current no problem and make it a pretty darn strong connection.

I'm talking about doing all of this though I haven't found a single bad stick yet. I expect to find some when I pull my current battery from my car.

More pics later.

Ross

 

The pictures are great, Ross!

Thanks for sharing your project with us. I find it very interesting.

Good luck.

 

Good job Ross! You make it look easy and interesting. If I have problems with my pack, I think I will take it on as well. How much where the chargers? I think I would have taken a chance with the pack with 3600 miles on it and then rebuilt my own. But that's just me. Anyway really interesting stuff you are doing and thanks for sharing. H

 

Thanks guys. It's tedious. But I'm making headway. Most of the chargers are finished as I type this. But I'm too tired to switch them to the next set. Tomorrow morning I think.

As for the battery from the junk yard... They "SAID" it came from a car with 36000 miles on it. But I'm not THAT trusting a person. Get my drift? ;-)

And who knows how long it had been sitting there in the junkyard. Nickel Metal Hydride batteries self-discharge over time. A single cell can also "flip" polarity in a multi-cell pack if they get much lower than .8 volts. That's bad news for a pack.

Theres a lot of electric stuff in the Honda Hybrid. I've been hasty before and paid dearly for it. No... my car is running... first we check out the junk yard battery. Then we put it in. :-) Just sayin. :-)

More as things develop!

Ross