New HCH owner...learning on the curve
 

Good afternoon all! My wife and I are the new owners of a 2003 HCH 5 spd. We got it with 180ish miles on it. My wife has a 120 mile daily commute, so we needed cheap and efficient transportation. We bought it from some friends. It has the IMA light on, but we are just letting that go for now. Next month I will probably build a grid charger and see if that helps things. I replaced the 12v battery yesterday, and the ima reset. That car is a completely different animal with the light off! Then ite eventually came back on, and it was back to its old self. I have some learning to do about the little ride, so hopefully this will be a good source of info!

Rob

Re: New HCH owner...learning on the curve
 

http://i663.photobucket.com/albums/u...psgplgicnn.jpg
Here is a pic of the air dam and grille blocks I put on the car.

Re: New HCH owner...learning on the curve
 

DIY charger/discharger in my sig.

Good luck,

Steve

Re: New HCH owner...learning on the curve
 

I am having no luck with the link in your signature. A grid charger is definitely in the plans, and hopefully soon. Am I gonna be wasting my time if I skip the discharger? I hadn't planned on that step, but nothing is in stone yet.

Rob

Re: New HCH owner...learning on the curve
 

I re-did it.

It's here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

Yes, you can skip the discharger, BUT it's only a tiny portion of the expense... about $4 plus bulbs. Deep discharging has consistently given me a 20-25% capacity boost for a given load. It completely eliminates voltage depression that is analogous to the old "memory effect" many recall from the NiCd batteries.

Grid charging is only half the equation. It improves things by "top" balancing the pack so that all cells are fully charged; however, voltage depression will cause healthy cells to fall out too soon because they can't deliver their current at spec voltage. Deep discharging pushes through this low voltage plateau, completely exhausts the cell of stored energy and enables future discharges to provide the remaining capacity at spec voltage.