Sorry, I was just trying to cheer up what is an overall pretty serious situation.
Nah, I'm fine (as long as my wife does not find out). Still have a smile. Could of been a lot worse. On my way home I saw a car on the side of the road in flames. Now that guy is in a pickle. He was still sitting in it too. No crash or anything. Probably just trying to stay warm till he had to get out. Others were there to help.
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Proud owner of a Blue 2001 MT as of May 2011 and a 2006 Hybrid Accord as of 2009.
Sounds like a classic example of charging nimh in parallel and one cell/pack discharging into the other in a runaway situation once they get out of balance. Glad you are OK.
Please post pics of the strip down.
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OBDIIC&C $50 inc software, pcb, switch and obdii plug.
IMAC&C HCH1 $50 inc software and pcb.
Sounds like a classic example of charging nimh in parallel and one cell/pack discharging into the other in a runaway situation once they get out of balance......
I read through this post with quite a bit of interest.
The thermal runaway with the "good" battery feeding the "toast one" makes the most sense on how the 400F temperatures were generated.
A trickle charger simply does not put out that kind of energy.
That's the bad thing about "guessing" temperatures. We don't know exactly or even close what the temperatures were.
Love my OBDIIC&C.
Willie
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01 MT "Little Red Rocket"
The first "TURBOCHARGED" Hybrid, Insight G1- (01/2003)
MaxIMA Battery (Serial #2), on 8/25/12 @ 301,520 miles
Use: 320,000 mi. @ 57.8 LMPG
IIRC, the chargers he's using put out about 3A. That alone will heat a pack well over 200 degrees with no cooling. Mike's charger can get cells to 200 degrees with no cooling, and that's only 1A. Again, ask me how I know.
But I agree, the paralled packs probably greatly contributed to the thermal runaway.
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Bumblebee Batteries, LLC - Helping your hybrid get from point A to point Bee!
@retepsnikrep - I'm glad I'm OK too and that the car and parking garage did not burn. Yep, I'll post pics but my wife reminded me of some obligations this weekend (helping poor school kids make an art item for their parents for Christmas) so tear down will probably not happen till next week. (besides the battery is still probably cooling off)
@3-Wheeler and Eli - Actually my charger puts out 8 amps but stops at 165 then the 750ma charger takes over which is set to 169. When the fanless pack got warm I bet anything it dipped below 165 and the 8amp charger further warmed it up and the voltage dipped further and the stock pack kicked in. Can you say "Chernobyl"?
@E27006 - Yeah some kind of thermal shutoff would have stopped the meltdown for sure. I was thinking of just sticking a floor heat thermostat prob near the battery that would shut off the charger when too warm. But sadly I never did it.
Big lesson learned.
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Proud owner of a Blue 2001 MT as of May 2011 and a 2006 Hybrid Accord as of 2009.
Those are reasonable voltages, but you got it. At 200F, a cell's voltage is only about 1.28V. That would make the pack about 154V, so things were cranking for some time.
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Bumblebee Batteries, LLC - Helping your hybrid get from point A to point Bee!
@retepsnikrep - I'm glad I'm OK too and that the car and parking garage did not burn. Yep, I'll post pics but my wife reminded me of some obligations this weekend (helping poor school kids make an art item for their parents for Christmas) so tear down will probably not happen till next week. (besides the battery is still probably cooling off)
@3-Wheeler and Eli - Actually my charger puts out 8 amps but stops at 165 then the 750ma charger takes over which is set to 169. When the fanless pack got warm I bet anything it dipped below 165 and the 8amp charger further warmed it up and the voltage dipped further and the stock pack kicked in. Can you say "Chernobyl"?
@E27006 - Yeah some kind of thermal shutoff would have stopped the meltdown for sure. I was thinking of just sticking a floor heat thermostat prob near the battery that would shut off the charger when too warm. But sadly I never did it.
Big lesson learned.
8 amp, Jesus!! I thought leaving a 350mA charger without a fan overnight was bad because my pack would be about 125-130 per the OBDC&C in the morn'.
(My grid charger fan connection failed somehow and I'm too busy to open the IMA box up to fix mine)
Well, they are 3.3amp chargers but for some reason they will put out over 8 amps when all in series without going into protection. 14 or so dell laptop supplies in series.
My design goal was to "opportunity charge" 3 or 4 times a day. For work I would need to stop for an hour or so multiple times and I thought I would just juice her back up (since I have a homemade "assist only" MIMA.
Unfortunately my company bought me a car to use so I just use "Bluie" to commute to and fro.
Using the buddy pack I could always get to the 8 or so amp hour count limit and the system would cut me off of any more assist. The lowest voltages I've seen under load was 138. Nice to have lots of assist time. (was)
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Proud owner of a Blue 2001 MT as of May 2011 and a 2006 Hybrid Accord as of 2009.
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