......Jim,
I have seen many packs show improvement in the cell drop out from cycle to cycle, so it can help, I hope to start pulling some sticks out of my three Insight packs to further refine the techniques.......
JimE,
I can agree with Mike on this.
When I first took my pack apart and started testing, I noticed that one of the sticks that was purchased from Eli started to drop around 7.1 volts or so.
After topping it off, then cycling it several times, it went down to 6.80 strong, when I chickened out and stopped the discharge, so cycling really did help.
The installation and first charge went perfectly. Thanks Mike for a great product and the excellent installation videos. The first charge only took a few hours and afterward I took her for a drive and the SOC registered a full set of bars but better yet the battery assist indicated full power and I could feel it climbing a hill. I purchased my Insight in February of this year and was told the battery was four years old. As soon as warm weather rolled around and I was climbing a steep hill the IMA light came on. The Honda dealer said it would be $2500 for a new battery. I decided to go the Mike D. Grid Charger route. The IMA light went off after a few weeks but I had already placed my order for the Grid Charger. I'd rather take care of my batteries than buy a new one - I'd just have to take care of that one too. Thanks Mike and your guys for a great job. Now I plan to read the manual some more and do a three cycle discharge/charge with the discharge lamp Mike offers. I guess I'll just have to do it twice a year to keep my battery happy for four or five years more.
Thanks for the feedback Chuck.
Happy to hear your pack recovered on the first charge, that is a good sign, and your plan to read the book and do some cycles with a soak should firm up the recovery.
I am getting a lot of interesting results from the cycling, and it seems that many first time users want me to evaluate what the data tell us, so I am going to start posting some of these here so we can all refine our understanding. feel free to elaborate or question what I am saying, as we are all learning.
The report includes the following.
DCT Discharge time
SDV Start discharge voltage
Disr Discharge stop reason
EDV End discharge voltage
PAH Percent of nominal capacity
SCV Start charge voltage
ChSR Charge stop reason
ECV End charge Volts
mAH Charge mah to refill the pack
WtH Watt hours to refill the pack
Cht Total Time in minutes to refill the pack
TpT Time spent in the topping zone of the charge
An insight owner sent me this data:
Bank0 Cycle1, P1
DCT 2 SDV156.0
DisR 4, EDV147.7
PAH 54 SCV147.7
ChSR 3, ECV177.8
mAH 3494 WtH 598
ChT 540, TpT 511
Cycle 1 was a short one, 2 minutes. so I expect that you had not precharged, so it was not a real cycle, so lets through out that data for now. A point of interest is that the reason for the discharge stopping was due to hitting the MinDischrgV*, which I thought we had set to 129-130V?
Cycle 2, tells us that the discharger ran for 98 minutes, and it stopped discharging for reason 6, which is controlled by the SlopeDifMax*, and could indicate a cell drop out at the very high voltage of 145.7V
What is the SlopeDifMax* set to?
The cell that dropped out got a full discharge on that cycle, and we see the MAH to fill the pack at 3336, which is still low, but when the cell dropped out, we were not using the charge in the rest of the pack. The deep cycling on that cell seems to have brought it back in line, as we see in cycle 3
Cycle 3
The discharge got down to where it should be, at 132.5, and the discharger run time reflects that in the 215 minute run, which is really good, and is confirmed by the 5143 mah to fill the pack.
This would seem to indicate that cell that dropped out in cycle 2 is an isolated cell, and that the overall pack is quite good. what remains to be seen is if the deep cycle capacity recovery is going to last. Another cycle or 2 may help to give it some exercise., but it is hard to say if it is required or not, as we don't have a lot of experience to base that decision on. It may be good to just drive normally and see how long you go with no problems, and then we may be able to zero in on an ideal frequency of conditioning to keep it in the zone.
First post cycle report from this pack owner.
"
Mike,
I have to say, I'm pretty psyched with the outcome of the first discharge/charge cycling.
On my usual commute to work, when my battery was working "well", it would get down to a few bars at some point during the 55 mile trip, and then by the time I got to the office, I could work it back up to almost full. The same scenario going home. But that was constantly watching the bars and "feathering" the driving to try to not let the battery bottom out.
After the cycling, The battery never went below 3/4 full all the way to work and back home. The majority of the time it was 7/8 or totally full. The battery seems to be much stronger and definitely gained more capacity. So far - really good.
I'll check out the settings of the MinDischrgV and the SlopeDifMax. I was out by the car when the light came on for that first two minute discharge. I thought it was weird too, and wrote down some notes in case that would help figure anything out. But, the bank is awesome, and tells us all that info anyway. Really cool design.
I'll keep rolling for a while and let you know how things are going. Thanks and Happy Thanksgiving to you and your wife,
John "
This is a good example of the advantages of the discharger.
Results for pre discharger charging .
"
Hi Mike,
Hope all is well. I wanted to give you an update, and see if I can get your opinion on my battery situation. I've done two charges so far: The soak charge when the batt volts were 149.4 before the charge, and 165.3 after. Then, my wife and I drove to Prince Edward Island (beautiful place, and super nice people) and the car drove great all the way up, and back to CT, then the IMA light came on a few miles before we were home. That weekend I did a regular charge: batt volts were 153.3 before the charge, and 168.5 after. Driving home today my IMA light came on again, as well as the check engine light. The last time that happened I had to have the battery rebuilt, so I'm not sure if I should try another soak charge, or would you recommend having the battery put on the bench and looked at? Thanks for your time,
John"
I advised Him to get a discharger and give it a reconditioning cycle, and the results are above.
Looks like trhere was a low capacity stick causing all the problems, and the cycles brought it back. Will see how long this new balance remains.
.....Cycle 2, tells us that the discharger ran for 98 minutes, and it stopped discharging for reason 6, which is controlled by the SlopeDifMax*, and could indicate a cell drop out at the very high voltage of 145.7V What is the SlopeDifMax* set to?......
Mike,
Maybe it would be a good idea to have your "header" information, such as SlopeDifMax be printed out so that we know this setting?
The header of the serial out does include the important variables, and the Labview program uploads all of the variables into the data tab of the program. Hope to get something up on my website for you guys to play with by the end of this week.
The complete variable and cycle data are able to be printed from labview for a hard copy if desired.
Would love to hear everyone's thoughts on my pack. 2008 HCHII, 97,000 miles, maintenance charger. I ran a three-cycle mode 6 recently and got the following numbers. Max slope diff set to 40. Slope would level off in the 30's for each charge; I used to regularly have slopes in the low 20's. I suspect my poor battery is in it's sunset years but am curious to hear your thoughts. It doesn't throw any codes and rarely recalibrates.
I've also noticed that the slope doesn't drop into the 20's and stay flat anymore. The most recent cycles are shaped more like a "U" than an "L". The scaling is different between the charts but overall it seems like I'm getting less time in the flat portion of the slope while discharging.
This was an old discharge run from June
Here's the result from my last mode 6 run.
__________________
2008 HCH II
Last edited by flyer351; 11-12-2012 at 04:42 PM.
Reason: fixed picture
Nice graphs!
It looks like your not fully charging.
The maintenance charger values for MaxChgTime* and TopTimeMN* are not long enough to give a good balancing charge, note that all of the charges stopped for the same reason, ChSR 3 which is MAx charge time.
You need to raise :
TopTimeMN* Maximum time to remain in the toping zone before shutoff
MaxChgTime* Maximum time to run charger in Run Modes 1 to 4
MaxChg_mAH* Total allowed mA-Hrs of charge
I would use :
1500 for MaxChgTime*
1200 for TopTimeMN*
7000 MaxChg_mAH*
If you do a regular plateau detect charge, you may also want to set the SampleTime* to 45 instead of 30 to get a more thorough final charge.
You want to see the charge stop reason be R8 Plateau detect, when doing a plateau detect charge, and see R4 when doing a soak charge.
The repeatable mAH of 3150, and chT of 540 are the clues. I have been lengthening the defaults on the last batch of chargers.
Change those settings and run another cycle, but beware, your looking at half a week to do the three cycles. May want to try just one.
Good luck.
Will be interested in the graphs to see how things change.
I am getting a lot of interesting results from the cycling, and it seems that many first time users want me to evaluate what the data tell us, so I am going to start posting some of these here so we can all refine our understanding. feel free to elaborate or question what I am saying, as we are all learning.
I think this is a great idea. I'm going to copy these analyses to "notepad" and then print as an addendum to my manual. Thanks!
You want to see the charge stop reason be R8 Plateau detect, when doing a plateau detect charge, and see R4 when doing a soak charge.
So would you suggest I do the same, increase the timeouts since only one of the charge stop reasons was R8?
I haven't done anything with my pack since this set of cycles except for one grid charge. I wish I had recorded when it was done. The pack doesn't deplete as quickly as it used to so I'm sure it was way out of balance.
I suggest that all mantenance charger owners tweak the timer values, as the original defaults were too low for the maintenance current. (sorry, we are all learning)
The key lesson here is that you need to be sure that the charge and discharge stops for the right reason, a regular charge should always stop because of plateau , and a soak should always stop due to the max topping time.
The discharge stopping at values > 140 indicates low capacity cells, and if successive charges do not lower the discharge stop value, it may be a good candidate for a closer look on the bench.
Another caution is that people with a second gen civic or other pack with more or less cells need to adjust the MinDischrgV* limits for that voltage battery pack.
Some useful formulas
Number of cells X 1.38V = Cut-backVPX*
Number of cells X 1.5V = ChrgStopVPX*
Number of cells X 1.08 = MinDischrgV*(should not be set to < 1V/cell)
Slope detect should be in the 20-100 range
Sample time should be in the 30 to 60 minute range
Of course these values can be adjusted differently for different results
The slope detect determines how deeply the discharge can go before the slope detect stops the discharge
The SampleTime*determines how long the plateau detect needs to see the topping voltage remain stable. The higher the value, the more thoroughly the charger will top off the cells
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