Honda Insight Forum banner

P1449

10K views 74 replies 5 participants last post by  Honda hybrid442 
#1 ·
2001 Insight, auto/cvt tranny

cel blink code 69
ima blink codes 78 12 58 74

I swapped out the DC DC converter and MDM PDU assembly on the car yesterday, then put the RB grid charger on it overnight. Went out for cruise this morning and got P1449 with those blink codes.

I have already done the following:
1. cut the white green stripe wire on the connector just behind driver's right shoulder (left hand drive) that causes the system to do a better job of keeping the 12v battery charged and I can see a difference with that battery's voltage now in the 13.6 to 14.0 volt range normally.
2. Added the 30 ohm resister in the battery harness and I am on my third set of battery sticks, but I have no way of being certain that this third set of sticks is "good enough." I did tap voltage on the set a while back and those voltages looked pretty good.
3. I have traded in/out bcm and mcm modules without getting me to a stable ima system.

Please let me know what to check or try next. I have the insight ETSM book, but it doesn't help me a lot. The pictures are helpful, but I am ****e at understanding schematas. (I can walk and chew gum at the same time, but only on flat ground)

Any trouble-shooting suggestions that include links to photos and/or video of the process would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Mike
 
See less See more
#2 ·
Sorry the 1449 can mean the "kiss of death" ,or a good cycling of charge and discharge is needed.
 
#3 ·
I'm not sure why you are swapping all these IMA components in and out. You likely have a bad battery pack and changing the other components isn't going to solve anything. Use this ref to diagnose codes:


The subcode 78 is a subcode of P1449(Battery Module Deterioration), one of the more serious battery codes and not likely to be resolvable by grid charging alone. A charge/discharge cycling routine might give some relief for a short while if you followed up with a grid charge of 30 hours every time you saw a negative SOC recal.

If you look at the ref above, the 74 code means that the taps or stick pairs aren't balanced, not surprising in view of the other problem. I didn't look up the other codes.

Grid charging overnight is no where near enough. A decent attempt would be 30-36 hours, or until the battey voltage stops rising.

Where are you buying stick that you have such poor luck? Are you buying matched sets or just a few here and there?

If you want to have a reliable IMA system, I'd recommend you buy a Bumblebee with warranty. If you can live without the IMA battery assist, and you can pass any inspection in your area, you can bypass the IMA pack and drive without it, but a CVT is apparently terribly slow to accelerate without a battery. The M/T is manageable to many and the cost is practically nothing. Search on battery bypass.

You might find this ref useful, particularly post #2:


Sorry not to be more encouraging, but these battery codes come up all the time on IC and those who try to help by passing messages back and forth aren't usually very successful. Grid cycling is usually recommended, but there are certainly no guarantees.
 
#4 ·
cel blink code 69
ima blink codes 78 12 58 74
....swapped out the DC DC converter and MDM PDU assembly on the car yesterday, then put the RB grid charger on it overnight. Went out for cruise this morning and got P1449 with those blink codes....I have no way of being certain that this third set of sticks is "good enough."... I have traded in/out bcm and mcm modules without getting me to a stable ima system.
P1449-74 -- if the troubleshooting info for that code is true, it should reveal that you have at least one really bad cell. One of your tap voltages has to be at least 1.2V lower than the rest (i.e. the nominal voltage of a single cell), for at least 25.4 seconds, under very narrow, light operational conditions (temp at least 77F, current between -20 amps and 11 amps, tap voltages at least 14.5 volts)... This just doesn't happen - unless a cell is truly poopsville...

P1449-78 -- pack can't charge more than 10% from near empty before hitting the upper voltage threshold (I've seen 20%, though)...

Basically, it sounds like you have serious pack problems. You say you're on your third set of sticks -- what happened with the other two sets that made you get a third, and have you done anything different, like buying different sticks, new ones, a set, reconditioned, etc.? You can't just buy any old sticks and slap them in and expect them to work. You probably know that. So, what have you done to try to ensure that you'd actually end up with a working pack?

Oh yeah, also, the idea that you grid charged it overnight and you still ended up with these codes -- very bad stuff...
 
#5 ·
I bought the car Jan 2019 with a really bad, unbalanced set of sticks and the IMA system did not work at all and drained the 12v battery. So that is the first set of sticks.

I picked up an battery pack at junkyard, the pack was very quite discharged, but came up nicely on RB grid chargre and seemed ok and well-balanced, so I installed that set. I continued to have IMA issues and CEL lights, so I pulled that pack and put it on the shelf. That is the second set of sticks.

I picked up a third set of sticks off Craigslist that were reported/sold as a good pack. They charge up nice and seemed balanced, but here I am with the ominous 1449 error code.

I have chased and gotten rid of a lot of codes on this particular vehicle with help from this list, but I have not yet managed to make the car operate with a healthy ima system.

I will run tap voltages later today and post those numbers, but yeah, the 1449 code points at pack. So, back to looking at the pack and maybe it's time to pay out for the bumblebee pack.

Thanks

Mike
 
#6 · (Edited)
cel blink code 69
ima blink codes 78 12 58 74
If I'm reading the OBDII blink code spreadsheet correctly, CEL blink 69 refers to P1600, 1644, and 1645. The 1600 is your 'general IMA problem code', the 1644 and 45 are motor fail safe signal (MOTFSA/B) problems. I'm thinking that might be a code you get if you unplug stuff or have pack problems, that the signal is interrupted for whatever reason, and then you get the code. It should go away though... You can re-check and make sure the connectors on the MCM are firmly seated, for now. But I'm prone to think it's not a 'real' problem...

IMA blink 12 appears to be P1576-12 - Motor drive module voltage problem. I think that's the code that happens when pack voltage and MDM voltage values differ too much. And I think that also usually happens a lot with pack problems, not a 'real' problem...

IMA blink 58?? P16BA?? I don't see that listed in the OBDII pdf code list, it's not one of the pdf troubleshooting sheets. There's a couple IC threads mentioning it but I haven't looked at those... In my shop manual, DTC - (58) is "charge/discharge Balance problem." No idea what that means. The troubleshooting steps are slim - check that your 12V battery is good, if so check that your 12V battery warning light comes on with key ON and goes off when car's running. If so, check that your idle speed is OK, if so you're good to go. So apparently this has to do with 12V charging, and it sounds like you've tackled that already...

So maybe half your codes are holdovers of problems that existed but no longer exist. Seems like the DTCs should have disappeared by now, but they haven't. Seems like you must have reset your computers by now, at least a few times, but, whatever, I think you should probably reset them now to clear and see what comes up again... So pull your 12V neg cable, wait 30 seconds, reinstall.

Your IMA charge state should reset - when you turn the key ON your BATT gauge should be empty. Before you try to re-start, though, I think you should take voltage tap readings and report them here, before you move forward with restarting... And I guess it's possible some codes can pop-up after your reset, with only key ON, no restart - so check for blink codes again after the reset and report what you find...

That's what I'd do, I can't think of anything else...
 
#8 ·
^ Yeah, that's awful. You need to do some kind of reconditioning... The fact that you already grid charged over night and it still didn't work tells me you need to do a discharge at least, of some sort. I'm kind of an oddball around here, I don't really recommend full pack discharges, and don't really recommend long, drawn out grid charges. I do 'tap level ultra-deep discharges', and good, full grid charges, but not too long... Here's a link to a brief rundown of the tap UDD process: https://www.insightcentral.net/thre...nimh-voltage-thread.89298/page-4#post-1421333

There's also posts of various tap voltage readings and discussion of them, in various places in the thread from which the linked post above comes. You might want to take a look and get a sense of what they should be...
 
#9 ·
put in a junction board so that car is running with no traction battery, but still charging the 12v battery.

I have the traction battery pack on the workbench and on the RB grid charger now and will let it run for 30 hours, then check the tap voltages again. I plan to do a couple of charge/discharge cycles. I will charge for 30 hours, then discharge to something like 120v, then back to charge. I plan to check tap voltages at every transition point to gather data.

I would love to get this battery pack healthy without having to resort to pulling the individual sticks and attempting to rearrange the pairs to get better balance, but I am prepared to try that if the grid charge of pack does not bring things back to something that looks healthy.

I am going to go read up again on the thinking about how low to go on the discharge sequence. I was thinking that 1v per cell was considered pretty low discharge, so that's where I came up with the 120v discharge target, but going back through to confirm stuff.

Cheers,

Mike
 
#15 ·
I too once thought that this approach was perhaps promising, but not so in my experience. Though a stick may produce a certain voltage at no load, what it does at assist load is entirely different. If the stick has a high internal resistance cell, then the stick terminal voltage will immediately drop more than the "good" sticks and you will trigger a code. I think that any stick level testing must always include a high current test because, after all, that is what the car does. (And, having so tested a lot of sticks, with cell level monitoring, the yield of good sticks is only about 1 in 3 tested for the 3 important variables - capacity, internal resistance, self discharge.)

Many owners/mechanic have tried stick level reconditioning, like you are doing, and most have given up of the approach. There has been very little long term success, if any, with that approach. You are walking well trodden ground, but if you find it entertaining then nothing is lost :)
 
#12 · (Edited)
^ It's too difficult and you can get similar results from... the tap-level ultra-deep discharge method I mentioned earlier. But, I'd say you should probably try one of the '3 cycle' full pack methods first, simply because it's easiest* and there's the most info about it around here, and people who will most likely walk you through it if you have questions.

*edit: I think I want to walk this statement back a bit. The tap-level ultra-deep discharge is probably easier than a 3 cycle, multi-bulb, multi-level full pack reconditioning routine. And, I think it's more effective, less risky, and more consistent with theory underlying reconditioning of our NiMH cells/packs. The real problem is that I'm the only one who's ever done it, as far as I know. There was a couple people who said they were going to try it, but they never reported back. It just hasn't caught on, and it's been around for quite a while now...

All you have to do is short tap terminals, 5 at a time, every other tap, which gently discharges each pair of sticks. Let each tap discharge until it reaches 1V or less. When the first set of 5 taps are discharged, remove the shorts and move them to the next set of 5, every other tap. Same process on these as the first - go to 1V or less per tap, remove shorts.

Let voltage rebound for about 24 hours. If the rebound voltage is above 12V, short the tap/s again. This last step is somewhat optional - you can just wait 24 hours and then hook-up your grid charger and do a full charge. The check for rebound above 12V is sort of a precautionary measure, to make sure you've eliminated 'crud'. But just going below 1V at tap-level, with such a small load, regardless of rebound V, is far and away better than the full pack deep discharges with light bulbs, 3 cycles or not. I'm not sure why people haven't grasped why this is so, why they haven't realized that full pack discharges on code-throwing packs is just nibbling around the edges...

To make the process faster - because tap-level UDD takes a long time - you can discharge the whole pack with a light bulb/s first, down to about 140V, then do the tap-UDD...

I'm not seeing the images I posted at the tap-UDD link I provided some posts above. I'll post here the graphic depicting how you'd short the taps at BCM connector C. You'd make shorting pins out of paper clips (like they are in my avatar)...


Here's an image of the first set of 5 taps being shorted, every other tap:
 
#13 ·
This seems really simple..but am not at your level..so bare with me on the questions...if this is the first 5 taps,that means you would have to move the pins 3 more times ,could you take pictures of the next 3 moves and explain how your measuring the the taps when their at 1 volt or less. Sorry if its dumb question. Am in a learning curve when it comes to this .
 
#14 ·
Not "dumb questions". There's supposed to be more images in the thread I linked to a few posts up, but I'm not seeing them there - so I'll post another here...

...if this is the first 5 taps,that means you would have to move the pins 3 more times ,could you take pictures of the next 3 moves and explain how you're measuring the taps when their at 1 volt or less.
There's only 10 taps total, so you only move the pins once. The image above shows taps 'AB', 'EF', 'IJ', 'MN', and 'QR' (I'm actually starting to not like this letter designation, so if I start saying "tap 1,3,5,7,and 9" you'll have to forgive me)...

This image shows taps 2,4,6,8, and 10 shorted ('CD', 'GH', 'KL', 'OP', and 'ST'):


To measure tap voltage during the UDD, back probe the connector and pull the pin out. It's a bit tricky, you need to stick the tips of your DMM into the back of the connector terminals, kind of hold the connector and probes in place with one hand while you pull the shorting pin out with the other. The voltage usually starts to rebound pretty quickly so you want to try to do this as quickly and smoothly as possible. But it's not super critical if you just get the voltage read close. I mean, you don't even need to be this careful - because whatever you accomplish with this method will still be way better than what you would have accomplished if you did the full pack discharges with light bulbs.

An easier though not as precise method is to just measure total pack voltage at the MCM connector 'to the right' (the two wire connector on the back of the other computer). It should be about half of what it was before you started the first 5 taps, and about half of what it was before you started the next 5 taps. So, if when you start the UDD, pack voltage is 144V, then total voltage when the first 5 taps are done should be around 72V to 84V, i.e. the voltage of the taps that aren't shorted plus whatever the voltage is for the shorted taps, which should be less than around 12V. Then after the first set of 5 taps rebound, probably to around 12V each, your pack voltage will be around 132V - so the next set of 5 taps are done when total pack voltage reaches about 66V to 78V...

The only drawback is that it takes a long time. If you discharge the pack as much as possible before the tap-level work, such as by leaving the car in auto-stop or discharging first with a light bulb, it takes about 4 days per set of 5 taps. A lot depends on the state of your pack, and that can vary wildly from car to car. I would not do the tap UDD, personally, unless I discharged the pack first by at least leaving the car in auto-stop. If you have a pack on the bench, you can let it go however long you care to wait... I don't think there's any risk of damage with this method, unlike full pack work, where you can severely reverse one or more cells and kill them...
 
#16 ·
I hear you, Jime. I am just trying pack level grid charging at this point. I am gathering data about the pack per the 10 tap voltages. At the end of the data gathering, I will probably help my grandson purchase a bumblebee pack, but for now, we are saving $$ and entertaining ourselves. Grandson needs to sell his Dodge Charger to get $$ for the insight. He is 20 and felt the need to own a muscle car in addition to his insight. 3 months of muscle car was enough for him.

After 24 hours on the RB grid charger I have voltage reading of 179v per the meter on the charger and I have tap voltages of
17.16
17.26
17.13
16.93
17.17
17.31
17.23
17.21
17.28
17.12
per my cheap voltmeter

I am going to turn off the grid charger at 30 hours, (about 4 hrs away) and measure again. Then I think I will let it sit for 24 hours, measure again, then move on to a discharge round. I am trying to decide what kind of discharge I want to do. I will start with the lightbulbs and let it draw down to around 144v. Then I am thinking about trying the UDD process that EQ describes. I think I don't have much to lose because the pack is probably toast and I am retired, have lots of time and I do find this entertaining.

Thanks

Mike
 
#17 ·
here are my tap voltages after about 24 hours off the RB grid charger
15.80
15.81
15.70
15.46
15.61
15.87
15.83
15.72
15.95
15.69
the spread of .49v looks bad to me. I have .26v if I kick out the 15.95 high and the 15.61 low pairs and replace with pairs that match better, but maybe that's a fool's errand.

I think I will put the discharge bulbs on the pack and let it discharge for a couple of hours, then read again.

I skimmed through the Q insight nimh voltage thread to see if I could get up to speed on the state of current thinking and maybe contribute anything useful as I play around with this pack. A drop in lithium pack sure would be great.

Cheers

Mike
 
#18 ·
15.80,81,70,46,61,87,83,72,95,69
The variation's bad, but also, those are really low. I wouldn't expect to see much lower than 16.44V after a full grid charge and a 24 hour rest -- if the pack were functional, maybe 16.08V to 16.44V. Hopefully you've just got some generally, typically 'crudded-up' cells and a deep discharge or two will clean things up.

Unless you're just curious to see what changes with a couple hour discharge, there's really no point to do that, from a functional standpoint. My advice would be to do a bulb discharge down to about 144V, and then switch to the tap-level ultra-deep discharge. I would not go much if any lower than 144V with your bulb discharge - with such variation in your tap voltages, and with generally low voltages, I think there's high risk of reversing at least a cell or two for long duration.
 
#21 ·
I am in discharge-by-bulb mode and down around 145v now. Once I hit the 140 mark, I will disconnect the bulbs and give it a couple of hours, check and record tap voltages again to make sure I am consistently down on voltage on each pair of sticks. Then I will move on to the paperclip discharge process. EQ says this is a gentle discharge, but I am worried because it looks like a deadshort to me and I am concerned that the paperclip will get really hot. I guess time will tell on that. I will definitely post back with results.
 
#24 ·
You're shorting the voltage tap circuits, and each of those circuits has two ~190 ohm PTC resistors in it. So the discharge current is only about 14.4V / 380 ohms = 38 mA, and that's about the maximum. I measured temp of the orange PTCs themselves a few times, with an infrared thermometer, when I first looked into this method. I don't recall the exact temp but it was maybe only about 10 degrees F warmer than ambient discharging a tap that was at above 14.4V...

Here's an approximate circuit diagram of taps, PTCs, and the shorting scheme:
 
#22 ·
Cool. Your on the bench though . Keep us posted .I'm going be the next Guinne pig...but I'll be in car pack attempting . Wait on eq1 with little more clarification. jime really didnt get your opinion on this method .like all sides covered ..Sean this seems possible if you have a spare car to use.
 
#25 ·
Cool. Your on the bench though . Keep us posted .I'm going be the next Guinne pig...but I'll be in car pack attempting . Wait on eq1 with little more clarification...
I've actually done the tap-UDD with the pack bypassed, i.e. I bypassed the pack, installed the shorts, and kept driving the car. As far as I can tell this is a relatively safe process, no more, or perhaps even less dangerous, than say installing a grid charger harness, for instance. The only thing I can think of that might be dangerous is if one of the PTCs failed yet failed in such a way that it created a short that wasn't mediated by any resistance. I don't really know if that's possible, it doesn't seem like it is, or it's at least not likely...
 
#26 ·
Now that would be cool,open up the box ,unhook the mcm,put the short pins in ,leave the main switch on in the back,and still be able to drive car,didn't you eventually have to park car to charge it back,for 24 to 30 hours,I do have a cal pod switch on the car,should I use that to bypass the Ima or leave it alone.
 
#27 ·
^ You have to do a full grid charge before using the pack, after a tap UDD. When I wrote "bypass" above, I was thinking that I did the full bypass - PACK SWITCH OFF, unplugging everything, and using the IMA-DCDC bypass pigtail. But now I don't remember exactly... You'd at least have to unplug the BCM connectors, probably at least the rear MCM connector, and most importantly, turn the pack switch OFF.
 
#33 ·
So let's see, you started at 145V, which means cells were probably around 1.2V each. You took it down to 84V, which means your first set of 5 taps got down to about 84V minus (60 X 1.2V) = 12V. OK, good... Then you let it rebound for 12 hours and voltage went up to 98V -- so your 5 taps rebounded to about 98V minus (60 X 1.2V) = 26V, or about 0.43V per cell on average... I think that's good, no reason to do another pass. Unless I'm missing something and you're not reporting total pack voltage here...
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top