With a good standard setup I saw about 5% improvement, but I was real hypermiler before so my gains were smaller than the average driver.
With a (phev) higher capacity battery it's a doddle to achieve huge numbers (150mpg) until your battery is exhausted. However there is a delicate balance to be struck to ensure maximum life from the batteries and maximum mpg over a journey. Also the IC engine has to be allowed to warm up to the lean burn point or it has a serious impact on mpg. This warming period for every journey consumes a certain amount of fuel and in the winter mpg goes down as the warmup period is longer and the heater may be in use. A preheater helps with this as would a thermos system if I ever get it built!
MIMA is a great mod. Highly recommended and prepares you for a bigger pack one day perhaps
Right now, I'm FAR from what I'd consider a hypermiler. I have 2 pretty large hills I have to climb to work and 2 pretty big ones for the way home. They are both at least 1 mile long and a pretty decent grade. Obviously, I regen every chance I get and I try to keep out of assist as much as possible. When I get to work and when I get home, I'm maybe 3-4 bars down from full SOC. I have been averaging 65.5 mpg on my 12 mile trip to and from work. That's obviously no AC. The car has some miles on it so I'm pretty happy with the results thus far. I'm looking to do any mod possible to get every last drop of economy out of the car. So far, I've just done the basics:
1. Honda reman IMA battery
2. CORRECT LRR tires for car (realized an honest 9 mpg gain by going to the LRR's over same pressured non-LRR tires)
3. I'm currently working on making sure every underbody panel is perfect and in place.
4. Replaced the grounds. As stupid as this sounded to me (mine looked to be OK) I have noticed the car goes into and stays in lean burn much easier and longer. I guess the sensor noise mentioned was true.
5. Replaced EGR valve to get rid of the shudder. Sadly, by replacing, I actually LOST about 5 mpg right away. I think that it's slowly come back to where it was (yes, I did an ECU reset).
6. All maintenance up to date. Fresh Mobil 1 0-20, fresh trans fluid, new water pump, new belt idler, new accessory belt, new coolant, etc.
I've read every page and I've watched every video. I just got confused when I continually saw 80-90 mpg's in the videos; I also noticed that all of those were only for a few miles so that worried me a bit. A 10% gain and setting me up to expand my battery packs sounds pretty good. Also seems more in line with what kind of mileage I figured I'd gain. I tune a lot of GM trucks for fuel economy and if I gain 10% on a tune, I'm pretty happy.
Well, guess it's time to list a bunch of parts so I can get a MIMA on the way....
I just got confused when I continually saw 80-90 mpg's in the videos; I also noticed that all of those were only for a few miles so that worried me a bit. A 10% gain and setting me up to expand my battery packs sounds pretty good. Also seems more in line with what kind of mileage I figured I'd gain. I tune a lot of GM trucks for fuel economy and if I gain 10% on a tune, I'm pretty happy.
Probably the mileages shown in the videos are short because the videos are short: who wants to watch a video of a display for several hours, even if bandwidth would allow it?
MPG's in the >80 range are quite do-able over long distances with the Insight-I MT, depending on route, speed, weather (wind, temperature), and driver. MIMA makes doing it a LOT easier.
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2006 MT
MIMA w/FAS module
various mods to driver
Umm, I'm not talking about video duration. Here in the last couple weeks, they have come out with video editing. With this new technology, you can take hundreds of hours of video and make it into just a few seconds. It's crazy. Maybe over on the East coast, they have not yet gotten the software to do this new high-tech hotness. In a few years, you should see it in your parts.... Until video editing is realized in your area, you can also use a Polaroid instant camera. Here's what you do: Drive a bunch of miles (100, 200, 500, 400,000, whatever) and, when you are done driving, point the camera at the FCD. There is a button you press and you'll hear a click followed by an electric motor sound. Don't panic, that is completely normal. The motor actually spits out the picture so you can grab it. Don't throw it away if you don't see the pic right away as it can take a few minutes to appear (it's magic). Here, we have what are called digital cameras. They also take still pictures but they are much faster and easier to upload pictures of things to the internetz.
If I told you my car had 402,XXX miles, would you expect to watch the video of the car since it had 0 miles or would you be happy with just a picture? I know I would be. Maybe you watch that show 24 and prefer to see things in real time. If so, I understand.
Alright, now that we have the sarcasm out of our systems, let's get back on topic. It appears at this point that TRUE realized gains are approximately 10% with the MIMA. My question has been answered.
Here you go, happy now?? You were whining about the videos, didn't realize you wanted FCD photos. Others here, right lane cruiser for example, could provide similar photos. The MIMA lights are in the foreground.
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2006 MT
MIMA w/FAS module
various mods to driver
I did an interesting test yesterday that I believe would be able to somewhat determine the internal resistance and health of the pack.
I have a full time voltmeter on my pack.
I was idling, pack at 158V no current in or out.
I revved the engine by using MIMA assist to put the full 100A into the IMA motor. The 158V dropped to 138V under the 100A load.
This voltage drop mostly represents the packs internal resistance.
After a short burst of assist,I let it idle again and the pack settled back to ~ 156V in less than a minute.
If we had several people repeat the test, we could compare numbers and see if the test tells us anything.
I did an interesting test yesterday that I believe would be able to somewhat determine the internal resistance and health of the pack.
I have a full time voltmeter on my pack.
I was idling, pack at 158V no current in or out.
I revved the engine by using MIMA assist to put the full 100A into the IMA motor. The 158V dropped to 138V under the 100A load.
This voltage drop mostly represents the packs internal resistance.
After a short burst of assist,I let it idle again and the pack settled back to ~ 156V in less than a minute.
If we had several people repeat the test, we could compare numbers and see if the test tells us anything.
Mike, I'm interested in doing this but am wary about running pack wiring to the cabin, if I put a .5amp fuse in line with wires going up to the drivers seat area, would this cause any voltage drop without load through the wiring?
Thanks for the result, I thought that, based on Peters result that the internal resistance was less than that because I thought the car did a negative recal at 140v. I couldn't figure out how NiMh could possibly have that low of internal resistance and I hadn't seen any numbers of voltage under load so I was thinking that the car really never sent the battery anywhere near the empty end of its SOC range. This really cleared things up for me because I was really scratching my chin trying to figure out how that was possible as I figured that the battery would have to drop lower than that to get at a decent amount of useful capacity. I'm curious what it looks like at 100 amps at 20% SOC on the dash gauge. I don't have MIMA(yet), so I will not know if I'm pulling 100 amps if I do the test. Does the car ramp down the amperage when getting around 5 bars or so? It does at 3 based on the stock gauge for mine while it sits in limbo as the BCM waits for the battery to appear empty based on its criteria.
You will shortly be able to view the pack voltage in safety and see what the current is actually doing. I don't recommend running High voltage wires from the pack into the cabin even if they are fused it's asking for trouble. Sadly the stock instrument panel is very misleading and the current/assist shown bears little resemblance to what is actually going on.
A reasonably safe way to measure the pack voltage is to use a 100:1 voltage divider.
A 100K 1% resistor in series with a 1K 1% resistor across the +- terminals will yield 1.44V across the 1K @ 144V battery voltage.
Most DVM's have 15 meg input impedance so the DVM load across the 1K will not effect the readings.
If the voltmeter leads get shorted, the 100K resistor limits the current to ~1.5ma.
The 100K should be 1/4 watt, and the 1.5ma load is disconnected when the car is turned off, so the pack will not discharge on it's own.
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MIMA + grid charging MPG
