I did a single-cycle discharge and charge over the weekend. Like Arbus above, the brutally hot weather in Wisconsin triggered a couple of recalibrations. I was driving with no AC, trying to maximize this tank. Turns out the battery pack and I both like it more temperate.
Anyway, I started with a discharge Friday evening with the pack at153.9 volts. I switched to 40w bulbs and let it run overnight. Nothing like the eerie glow of an Insight backlit by the discharger at night...
By 11:38a Saturday morning it hit 57.4v at 160 milliamps. The bulbs were pretty dim! (Kinda like the owner...)
I let it rest for an hour with the grid charger driving the pack’s cooling fan, during which voltage rebounded to 120.4v.
I started the grid charge with my homemade charger at 12:41p Saturday afternoon and let it run for the next 25 hours, with two brief interruptions when I had to drive the car to church and back. For these, I flipped the master battery switch to off so the Insight’s own charging system wouldn’t intervene.
The charge peaked at 170.9v and 342 milliamps Monday morning at 9:20a with a temperature in the car of 67F. It then slowly declined as the day got warmer. I turned off the charger at 1:26p at 170.2v and 342milliamps, temperature 74F, but left the fan running. By 3:38p the temp in the car was up to 77F and the pack had settled down to 164.5v.
I pulled the fuse under the dash to reset the computer and went for a drive. All seems well. My week-long three-cycle battery conditioning in March lasted around 6 months, which seems to be par for this car. I’m curious to see if a single cycle has the same longevity.
- Park
PS - Coincidentally John, another Insight enthusiast, chased me down in the parking lot at Ace on my test drive. He had just scrapped a silver Insight with 460k miles and serious squirrel damage. He is going to contact the yard and see if a few parts can be salvaged before it is shredded. My first encounter with another Insight owner in the wild.