Battery Fan Upgrade Project

[thunter]

Thanks for all the info.

As to why the fan went bad I am not sure. I got a code I didn't recognize about a heat related issue a while back. I parked the car and its been sitting for about a year. I pulled the battery last month and charged and balanced all the cells and put it back together and it has been running fine.

I built a grid charger this weekend based on the excellent thread here but when I connected it the fan did not run. I thought the 12V power supply was bad so I connected a 12V battery but it still didn't run. I have a Sunon fan of the same size and .6A so I set it in there while doing the grid charging.

I have a Vectrix and the heat hear in Texas seems to be a batteries worst nightmare. It seems to me when they design some of these things they don't always take the kind of heat we get here in the south into consideration. So when I realized the fan was bad I naturally starting thinking about whether the stock fan was enough. Honda builds great cars, but it seems they had a few shortcomings with the G1 Insights.

I was really glad to see this thread along with a couple others I found. And the accompanying info about how much heat the batteries generate and how too much heat limits the IMA's output. I had no idea the batteries put out that much heat. So a bigger fan seems to be in order.

Cutting the new fan to fit won’t be a problem. My wheel grinder should make quick work of the shaping process. Given the minimal cost to implement a much more effective fan this seems like a cheap upgrade.

I am going to order the fan below. Considering the path the air has to go through both to get into the battery and out of the enclosure once exhausted, a fan that deals well with some restriction seems like a good choice. This one has low power draw and the ability to deal with back pressure and still flow a lot of air. Plus I think it’s small enough it will still run from my grid charger.

Delta QFR1212EHE 12V 1A 12W 5000RPM 173.83CFM 59dB $18.86 130CFM@.24"

Todd

[Eli]

Yeah, I really wish I could have a conversation with a Honda engineer about the fan.

It's almost as if they were like, "Huh? The battery gets hot? I guess we'll add a fan, then...". lol. It's completely inadequate, especially when you consider the Civic has a giant blower that draws like 4 amps at full tilt.

[Willie Williford]

I think they were more concerned about the noise. So they installed a very quiet fan. I have both a pusher fan and a puller fan installed with a rated cap. of 150CFM.
They are a little noisy, especially the one that is pushing air. They pull about 1,4 amp. if I remember right.

HTH
Willie

[thunter]

The new fan is installed and functioning.

I did a simple test by holding a 3" wide strip of paper over the fan while running. The old Sunon replacement which was rated at 85cfm moved the paper but not much. The new Delta QFR1212EHE pushes the paper out of the way strongly. Leaning over the trunk you can feel it.

Of course this is subjective, but I would say the new fan is easily moving 3x more air through the batteries. And it runs off the Grid Charger which is a plus.

Looks good so far. See how things fair when summer heats up.

Todd

[Willie Williford]

Todd
Please include your location in your "User CP/details".

Willie