[Rick]

Ok, I though since there was some talk about recals and the like I though maybe we should post it here to maybe see if there is a pattern.

For the purposes of this a recal is where the SOC gague suddenly falls to 0 bars and goes in to a force charge mode.

In my observation the older Insight's will recalibrate if left in auto stop for longer than a few minutes. CVT's do not seem to exhibit this behavior to date.

Anyways, I'm thinking we want a year, miles, recal occurance, driving terrain and climate to perhaps to try and establish a trend.


My car is a 02 5 speed with 25,000 miles on it. I've had one recalibration durring the whole time I've had the car. This was under the worst possible conditions. Up a steep hill, summer on a 110 degree day with the air on pretty heavily. Unlike the older cars I've been in I can leave it in auto stop for hours on end and it won't recalibrate. I think this might have been fixed with the new ECU on the 00 and 01's. The only other recalibrations I've ever seen were induced by myself pulling the 12 volt to do whatever I needed to do.

 

[Hambone]

I have been seeing a significant increase in recals of late. Usually for me, it seems lately its happening about once every week to week and a half, and usually only from what the meter is showing as a full or nearly full charge. Since I drive a mix of highway and stop and go roads, its not all that often that I have a full charge. I imagine that maybe the more frequent recals are having some effect on my mileage, but I'm at the low end of that spectrum anyhow.

At this point in time, my car is just past 60K miles and is an early 2000 model. I tend to drive the car hard, and spend a lot of my acceleration time hitting the gas hard, so I use a lot of assist in my normal travel.

Fortunately, the recal event usually sees my meter drop to zero and then build back up rather quickly, so I'm never without boost for too long.

 

[Rick Reece]

I'm out of warranty but the recals began around 8-12 K. They appeared toward the end of the first summer (A lot of us have thought heat may be a contributing factor). The second year they increased to roughly once a week and by the third year I saw them multiple times a week. I am still not convinced its the battery but lean toward the SOC guage not keeping track of the amps leaving/charging). As a result the guage nearly shows full when the low voltage trigger is reached causing a recal. In the end they are an inconvience but have not effected my lmpg which still seams to be improving. I drive mainly highway miles and if I were in city driving with frequent recals I would probably not consider them a mere inconvience. It is certainly a battery management issue as the CVT's don't have them and their batteries could possibly have as many cycles as the 5spds but perhaps not to the same depth of discharge.
Recently they had a salvaged 03 Insight on Ebay that had a broken lower engine block due to flood damage. Before the price got out of hand (sold for 6.6K) I considered buying it for the battery pack and perhaps a future EV project. Have fun, RIck

 

[Armin]

recals in MYBRID

My recals started around 12k miles. First rarely, then every 500 miles on average in the summer. Still rarely in the winter. Sometimes two recals can be within <100 miles of each other. But it depends on my driving, too. In the summer, the car pretty consistently recalibrates if the SoC gets below 12 bars, higher if the last recal was longer ago.

I'm now at 60k miles and the winter is giving me a break from recalibrations again. Next summer, before the 80k warranty expires, I plan to start a fight with the dealerships service department to try to get a new battery. Wish me luck!

 

[dfiore]

3 things that trigger a recal

I live in Florida where it's usually quite warm and muggy. The 3 main things I've noticed that trigger a recal is sitting in auto-stop for a long time 5+ minutes with the radio on. and idling 3-5+ minutes running the air conditioner then driving (even if you turn the air off before driving). The 3rd thing that seems to trigger a recal is that if you are using small amounts of assist for 20-30 sec at a time, you're always doing the "caterpillar" around here, it won't register on the charge gauge, but wait until it needs to adjust itself.

Hope this helps.