Its not bee been a good week

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phb10186

Well-known member
Joined
May 13, 2016
Messages
325
Location
North London suburbs, UK
So on Sunday I did a mild-British winter 55 mile round trip north out of London to the country and back on mainly smaller 50-60mph highways. It was fairly mild, but foggy and moisture rich air prevailed. I needed to preserve range on the outbound, so I only had the blower on to try to keep the windscreen clear, which was not done hugely well, so I helped it along with a couple of 5 minute AC bursts.

Lack of heater meant I had to have the seat heater on the whole time, and I also had the rear screen defroster on, to clear the back up. So a fairly heavy load on the 12V battery.

Didnt use the car on Monday, or Tuesday, as its public transport time to work. Coming back home on Tuesday evening, the car was beeping, and upon trying to do anything, had a totally flat battery. I stuck a multi-meter on it and it was reading 5.6V... so I came to the conclusion its toast at 4 years old (and due to only 12K miles, been sitting idle alot) as my trickle charger wouldn't even charge it. Positive terminal was all furred up too.

Luckily I had the spare original Yuasa battery from my wifes Insight 2 that I changed at 5 years old preventatively last year, which is exactly the same case size, though slightly larger capacity... 36 or 38 Vs 34. It was dark, so I swapped them over and then realised the Insight cell has the smaller terminal type, where the I has the standard terminal size.... damn it. I fashioned a couple of collars out of some lead sheet I had spare which works sort of good enough until I get my terminal adapters delivered.

Car runs, though terminals arent so well tightened, so its emergency use only.

That happened while the Insight has had an undiagnosed drive problem since Oct 2014, and is in the shop after I delivered the dealer and Honda UK with a stern notice of attention to diagnose this once and for all (i'll not elaborate on the excruciatingly bad customer experience by Honda Dealer, Honda UK and the sheer arrogance and incompetence of any thorough investigation if the ECU is clear of fault codes - which it is - but they have now diagnosed a non fault code related misfire on cylinder 2, which has been existant for 27 months now, and ownership-experience shattering)... The Insight 2 comes out as the 4th most reliable car in the UK according to the largest extended warranty underwriter, but this one has not been great to own (and its my 9th honda car or bike now, and I have always been a Honda guy at heart - well, for their traditional products anyway - the new ones seem to be less good. My 18 year old Accord that I keep as a back-up in a garage starts first turn of the key, no matter how long it sits for).

Tall and short, I had 2 cars, and was down to none last night, with a sort of makeshift fix, Ive got the IMIEV active enough for light duty til I can properly secure the battery.

I jump started it with my NOCO Genius Boost for the first time to isolate the battery initially, and what I realised is that unlike ICE, the booster doesnt auto initiate, so you have to override the activation to get the IMIEV to fire up... but it did, and its nothing more than a crappy battery.

I do not like the positive terminal on the car, its fiddly, got too many cables ajoined, difficult to stick out of the way when swapping out a battery, and the access is already very tight.
 
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