What color are your IMA battery sticks?

[Hybrid-Battery-Repair]

I've run across two battery packs that had yellow, not orange sticks, and were uniformly higher capacity than standard. Every stick tests at 7.2 Ah instead of the standard 6.5. Furthermore, none of the sticks show signs of wear.

Other incidentals are that the bolts and screws for the battery sticks are silver colored instead of copper colored.

I found one of these in a 2001 Insight and another in a 2003 HCH.


For anybody who knows what they have, please answer these four questions:

What color are your sticks?
What year is your car?
Is it manual or CVT?
Has the battery ever been replaced under warranty?

Thanks for your help.

[uhtrinity]

Stock 2000 Insight subpacks - Orange shrink wrap
2003 Civic subpacks - Yellow Shrink wrap

[gpsman1]

My 2000 MT = orange

[JimIsbell]

Verrrry interesting......

I have three batteries right now, two are Insight and both probably 2000 year and both with Orange color and Gold bolts. The third is Civic and it is supposed to be a 2005 year and has Yellow color wrapings and Silver bolts. The Insights are MT and the Civic was CVT

I went back to look at the computer records of the charge/discharge cycles on them (I use a CBA-II analyzer, best $60 I ever spent, so I have a recording of every cycle I put my batteries through) and discovered that, yes, the Civic battery had about a 0.5 Ah better capacity. But at the time I chalked that up to the fact that it was 5 years younger than the other two.

Maybe I should re-think cannibalizing the Civic battery and instead put ALL of the sticks from the Civic pack into one of the insight packs.

Or....maybe replacing the center 10 sticks on both the Insight packs with Yellow Civic sticks that apparently may be a little hardier???? That would leave me with 20 Insight sticks to use for experimenting and replacement.

Lots to think about here.....Just when I was beginning to think I had a grasp on everything.....

[Hybrid-Battery-Repair]

Originally Posted by JimIsbell

Verrrry interesting......

I have three batteries right now, two are Insight and both probably 2000 year and both with Orange color and Gold bolts. The third is Civic and it is supposed to be a 2005 year and has Yellow color wrapings and Silver bolts. The Insights are MT and the Civic was CVT

I went back to look at the computer records of the charge/discharge cycles on them (I use a CBA-II analyzer, best $60 I ever spent, so I have a recording of every cycle I put my batteries through) and discovered that, yes, the Civic battery had about a 0.5 Ah better capacity. But at the time I chalked that up to the fact that it was 5 years younger than the other two.

Maybe I should re-think cannibalizing the Civic battery and instead put ALL of the sticks from the Civic pack into one of the insight packs.

Or....maybe replacing the center 10 sticks on both the Insight packs with Yellow Civic sticks that apparently may be a little hardier???? That would leave me with 20 Insight sticks to use for experimenting and replacement.

Lots to think about here.....Just when I was beginning to think I had a grasp on everything.....

Swap them all. The battery will perform at the level of the weakest stick and the weakest of the yellows is probably higher than the strongest orange. Note that there are three thermistors on the Insight and 4 on the Civic. There is a second layer of wrap around the thermistors. Slit the wrap and then put the wrap onto the new stick and tape it with scotch tape.

Shuffle the inner sticks to the outside and top to bottom to equalize the heat damage.

[biododge1]

The pack I just got (reman) has yellow batts. As for the hardware it has gold and silver. The use/layout is somewhat random looking, I had just chalked it up to old bolts being stripped, lost ect.

[Hybrid-Battery-Repair]

Originally Posted by biododge1

The pack I just got (reman) has yellow batts. As for the hardware it has gold and silver. The use/layout is somewhat random looking, I had just chalked it up to old bolts being stripped, lost ect.

The silver bolts that I'm referring to are internal and are only visible if you open up the pack. They are the bolts that hold the battery sticks in and the screws that connect the PTC strips.

I'm starting to think that they had a change to the basic battery in 2002 or 2003. I need to find some Insight owners that have 02+ cars to tell.

So far all the replacement packs seem to be yellow.

[JimIsbell]

Do all the Yellow ones have higher capacity?

[Hybrid-Battery-Repair]

Originally Posted by JimIsbell

Do all the Yellow ones have higher capacity?

So far, yes. Not a lot, but about 10% more on every one I've seen.

[JimIsbell]

Maybe because they are newer and havent deteriorated as much???

BTW, I realized yesterday while removing the battery in preparation for a swap, that you can see what color your batteries are by just removing the battery box top and then look through the fan duct and you can see the color. No need to remove the battery to see them if anyone is interested in adding to this thread but are afraid its hard work.

I just a few days ago ran into an old friend that has had a stroke. She has lost all her long term memory and retains only recent stuff. As I was doing the battery swap I realized that I would be dead in the water if anything altered my memory as I swapped various parts from one battery to the other and back again. There are a lot of connectors, bolts, wires, etc that are all related to the swap, in addition only one of the batteries I was working with had all the hardware so I had to move the BCM, MCM, filters, one wire, and some other paraphernalia, memory really helps!!!!