I have an appointment for tomorrow but the matter has gone worse... Much worse. Based on the display, I don't see it charging anymore. Not when I hit the brake and not when I coast. The bars go all the way up. As soon as I give gas, it shows assist but after 3 seconds goes away and the battery meter drops to 2 bars consistently. Its like a roller coaster with the bars going up and down. Is it possible that my charging system isn't working? My battery light doesn't come on although my IMA light has popped up. If I really get on the gas when the battery bars show low, it will trigger the IMA light. I do have the check engine light on though for obvious reasons. My fear is that the hybrid system will stop charging the 12V battery and leave me stranded on the side of the road. Although I have not seen an instance where the 12V battery light came on... Is it possible for this to happen if I keep driving? I'm not too concerned about the battery meter jumping up and down as I'm going to see them tomorrow for repairs. My main concern is that the hybrid battery will get so low to the point that it can longer sustain the voltage to keep the car powered up while driving. Thanks for any insight.

 

Everything you are describing is normal for an HV battery failure.

Your concern about the 12V is legitimate. If the 12V light stays off or is only on intermittently at idle and high rpm, but off during cruise, you're good for now.

 

Awesome thanks. Ill keep you posted regarding my outcome tomorrow. When they test it they will let me know if its a single module or multiple ones that have gone bad. Hopefully they will supply me with good ones. Thanks again bud.

 

My hope is that they've been spending the days since you contacted them evaluating and building a truly good pack or identifying a number of truly good subpacks for replacement.

FYI, the voltage of the 11 subpacks after a 30 minute rest should be almost exactly the same. Variance outside of 0.05V is highly suspect. In short, any subpacks that measure outside a .05V range are likely bad. This will only be true for your the subpacks in your pack at the same moment in time. comparing your values to replacement subpacks will be inconclusive.

 

Its not likely that they will prepare a new pack for me. I did ask, however, if they had one available in the event they had to swap it out and was told that they do. My previous (original) battery voltages ranged from as low as 11V to as high as 14 volts depending which module was tested. Considering that the meter on my dash fluctuates up and down every 30 seconds at this point indicates that they should be able to spot the bad module (assuming there is only one that is bad) and replace it with a known good one. You should know that I opted for the larger batteries from an 09+ civic as opposed to 06+ civic. I figured that the batteries would be newer and less likely to fail consider their age as well as their size. if I'm not mistaken, 09+ models had slightly larger batteries with more capacitance. My logic was that the batteries would last longer because of their age as well as the higher capacitance. What they do is use the same pack from my original unit but in addition they computer generate smaller spacers to compensate for the size hence making 09 batteries fit into an 06 housing. The premise is sound... Or at least I think it is.

 

I posted the voltage criteria because it is critically important when you have little else to go on. Please do not ignore that. It is highly likely that you have most of the subpacks outside the .05V range I mentioned. Those are the bad ones.

Your logic was horribly flawed. The capacities are identical. Had you done some research, you would have discovered the horrible failure rate of the 09-11 batteries. A 2013 CR study showed that 30% of 09 and 10 batteries had failed within the prior 12 months of the survey. The same survey showed the 06-08 failing at about 16%, but those were a little older.

The 09-11 batteries are so bad, Honda extended the warranty to 10yr/150K miles in ALL states to avoid getting sued on this model (been sued on every hybrid prior except for the 05-07 Accord Hybrid and Gen2 Insight).

The subpacks in the 06-11 are all essentially identical (there have been some small iterations, but they're all 5.5Ah Sanyo cells). The 09-11 use different spacers than the 06-08 to provide a little more spacing between the subpacks. Unfortunately, that just made the cooling problem present in the 06-08 even worse with more hot spots.

So I would ask to get your 06-11 sticks put back in an 06-08 case so you can see some marginal cooling improvement.

In closing, I'm going to be very blunt. HCH2 batteries are horrible. Any optimism you have in this situation is completely unfounded. Any faith you have in Falcon Hybrid is misplaced. Any expectation that this visit will rectify your problem long term is completely unfounded. You are at the beginning of an uphill struggle, and you will be in their shop multiple times.

For your sake, I hope I'm wrong, but the reality is that statistics and atrocious reliability of these packs are working against you. Furthermore, you're dealing with an organization that needs to be profitable. Rather than apply the standards necessary to build truly quality packs (throw out 80% of the subpacks), they're going to try and get away with using ones they think are on the line and might work.

Good luck.

 

Hey bud...Let me just tell you that i really appreciate your input. You seem like you know the ins and outs of this hybrid setup so to have someone like yourself give advice is extremely beneficial to people like myself. As a side note.... I did do extensive research although my research was limited to the reason as to why my IMA light initially came on. I didn't really look into the battery portion of it and that's obviously my fault (as is everyone else buying refurbished batteries). Unfortunately, the damage is done and i cant revert back to changing my mind. If the batteries fail more than 3 times then i will request a refund and go the route of new batteries. Believe me... had i know then what i know now i would have chucked up the additional funds for a new set.
So this is my predicament now and i have to deal with it. If the battery lasts me 1 year then when they do fail, ill opt for new ones for sure. I may just take the hit and ask for the original 06-08 batteries like you recommend based on the failure rate you suggested from the 09+. Thanks again for the advice and the help as i will find out tomorrow what the issue is. As of now, the car has ZERO assist from the hybrid. Its worse now then it was with my old original ones. Im hoping its not a big deal and is an easy fix but like you said.... I may have a long uphill battle ahead of me. Ill keep you posted tomorrow.

 

I'm just trying to help you with the proper perspective. I apologize if I've been harsh. Optimism is actually going to work against you in this situation. Every single hiccup you have should have the immediate reaction of "Falcon battery is bad. Call Falcon," and "just had another recalibration. Falcon Battery is bad. Call Falcon," and "I think this experience has been such a pain in the a$$, I have hemorrhoids. Falcon battery is bad. Call Falcon."

This is the input:

1) you have a vehicle with the 2nd worst hybrid battery ever made.
2) you replace it with a case from the worst hybrid battery ever made.
3) The entity from which you purchased said battery failed to deliver a battery that lasted even two weeks.

There is no positive outlook except for the warranty period. Hold their feet to the fire. Every day you drive on a bad battery means your warranty is extended by that amount. Be such a pain in their a$$, they have no choice but to actually put forth the necessary effort to get you a truly good battery just so they don't have to deal with you anymore.

 

I went to them today and had them swap out the pack. I took the normal pack (06-08 civic) in exchange as you mentioned. Unfortunately I did not get a refund for the difference between 09 and 06 packs but if this battery pack is more reliable then I'm fine with that. Drove home with no issues. The car started using the hybrid battery and not the starter. It shuts off when I make a complete stop as normal. I am getting motor assist and it is charging when I let off the gas or when I hit the brake pedal. So everything seems to be working fine as of now. Only time will tell if there is an issue.
What was odd was that I tested the batteries (the ones that I removed) and all the modules show 16+V. Last night I tested the pack and got 185V total so I wasn't surprised that each module is showing 16V. I find it hard to believe that I was getting those values but no assist, no auto stop, and it wasn't even charging when I hit the brake or coast. In addition, the meter today stayed on 1 battery bar the whole day. I'm a bit puzzled as to why that happened. Maybe you or someone can fill me in on that. I will continue driving and will post an update. Thanks for your help in this matter Keith. You have been an awesome help and for future reference will pick up a new battery pack when comes the time. May be sooner than later based on the information you supplied.

 

What a racket. They charge more for the sh!ttier packs? Wow.

Note that I mentioned 0.05V variation twice before. You are saying 16+V. There's a reason I have two digits to the right of decimal. It matters. 16+V is meaningless.

I assume that your testing was done after parking for the evening, so it had been driven recently? Since IMA function was nearly disabled with frequent regens, the car was constantly charging the battery and never discharging it - artificially driving the voltages higher.

Did you ever measure your subpack voltages to XX.XX accuracy after they sat overnight? I recommend you do that tomorrow morning to see what kind of pack they gave you.

Resting voltage is the least important of four criteria:

1) Self-discharge, SD
2) Internal resistance, IR
3) Capacity, mAh
4) resting voltage

The only thing you can say with any certainty from resting voltage is whether you have a completely dead cell or not, and even that is time sensitive. It could measure fine shortly after the car is parked and then be junk 12 hours later.

People think this **** is easy. It's not. There are 132 cells in that pack that need to work in a vary harmonious way, and it's not feasible to test all 132. So, you go with 6 or 12 and take a hit of the hopeium pipe. Honda cells are also the worst because they will trick you. They'll make you think they're uber-great and then a few days later, they've lost all their charge. Most builders neglect meaningful SD testing... which is essentially the most important criterion.

Good luck,

Steve