Thanks for the info. I'll check it out further. At first glance I assumed it was just another trickle charger.

 

How many miles? My 2011 Fit Sport is on its THIRD battery, and it only has 30,000 miles. When this one dies, I'll think long and hard before I replace it with another 151R.

 

62,000 miles.

full disclosure, I did replace it the last week of 2013 with a NAPA 151R ($92 including core). It was 4.5 years old. The new battery may have saved me from sleeping another night in a bar during Icepocalyspe. Or maybe it would have gone on cranking for another 3 years; I'll never know now...

 

Hello guys!!! How to fit 51r battery in?
Watch my video to see how to...
Thank you for watching

 

We have a 2009 Fit and have had batt problems for years, We are on our 3rd batt. Honda told us we don't drive it enuf and we should purchase a battery tender. I was quite upset with the dealer since the car was still pretty new. I don't know why Honda can't just own up to the fact they put a motorcycle batt in a car. If you leave the lights on the batt will go dead. I did install a battery tender a while back and the batt has gone dead again even with the tender plugged in every weekend. I will be putting in a 51r batt tomorrow. Too bad Honda, who makes a great car won't stand up and take responsibility for this problem Thanks, Mike

 

You did not state how often and how far you drive the car during each trip. Your implication is that you drive the car every week day but not on weekends. If this is true, then you need to figure out what is draining your battery. A battery should be able to hold enough of a charge to start the vehicle after being parked for 30 days.

I did have a dispatcher once that lived 1 mile from work and drove only 2 miles on an average day. No matter how large of a battery we put in that car she eventually ran it down. Winter was the worse time due to the shorter days and she drove home with the headlights on. The solution was to install a solar battery charger and put it in the front window on the dash. She always parked pointing south into the sun both at her apartment and at work. This way she got a minor 8 to 13 hour charge every day when it was parked at home and in the lot at work.

 

All he really needs is the car to be on for longer then 10 minutes at a time. The first 4-5 minutes of operation should charge what starting took, and the rest will give the battery a good surface charge.

However a good 30-45 minute drive a few times a month will keep the battery in good condition if work or family prevents the time to get a good long drive on it.

 

While I agree with your post, one additional factor is battery temperature. I do not know where he is from but I'm guessing a south Chicago suburb. If it is cold where he is then during first minutes of driving the battery will convert most of that charging current to heat warming up the battery firsst before it actually starts taking a charge. I had a chart one time on charging rate vs. temperature on lead acid batteries. I have no idea where it is any more.

So initial charging may be delayed depending on where he is located.

 

a battery doesnt need to be warmed up to work. it acts like a smaller battery when its cold.

the act of "being smalelr" is what causes lower voltage and higher amperage, pushing the battery beyond its design limits.

Go spend 5-10 bucks on a sheet of insulation and wrap the battery. Sudden temp changes will hurt it as well. In my case, its a plastic box with bedliner sprayed on the inside to both seal out moisture and slow temp change

 

I thought I sent a message earlier. I put in the 51r today. It wouldn't fit (no pun intended) across so I put it in diagonally. I cut the metal plate and the plastic holder. The long red positive terminal would not fit anywhere at the top of the batt so I got a 12" cable with one end going on the batt and the other end had a hole so I screwed it on where the old bolt was to the left of the old female terminal (which now goes nowhere). I have pics but it says I can't send attachments (how do I change that). At first I took the old pos terminal off the bolt to the left and put it on the batt but found out that d/n work so I called Honda and they were no help so I figured I had to run the power thru the left side of the positive terminal assembly.


Anyone have any info on putting a solar charger on to maintain the batt? Thanks, Mike

 

If you look at the positive terminal thing, you will see how to remove the red cover piece, then remove the wires (notunbolting them) from that backbone wire guide thing.

Once that backbone thing is CUT flat and level with the terminal base, you can use it directly on the battery.

 

you got a picture of this? having trouble visualizing it. the red battery fuse cap is just dangling off to the side.

 

How do I attach pics to the message? I have some good ones. If you look at the positive terminal assembly there is a bolt on the left that bolts the cable to it. I unbolted the cable the and bolted the end of the new 12" cable to that bolt. The other end of the new cable (the end that goes on the batt post) went on the batt post. I cut the leg off (on the left that goes down the side of the original batt I think) of the black plastic piece since it was in the way. I thought I could then lay it on top of the batt and just used the old batt terminal clamp but it w/n fit so I used the new cable. What exactly does the positive batt post assembly do. When you take the cable off of it and put it on the batt terminal it does not work. Also I stumbled across a YouTube video that told me how to get the radio going again or my wife would have been pretty mad at me. If I can't attach pics maybe I could send the to someone and they could put them out there. Thank God for the forums. I use them all the time for my bike. I actually thought about doing this batt change along time ago but did not want to take a chance on messing something up. Thanks, Mike

 

I had to replace my battery in my 09 around the 3 yr mark....no warning either...left the hazards on for 15 minutes with my light on and bam....

SevereService, even if it has been mentioned before, continue to share as your posts deal are more useful to a majority of us than most of what I've read since joining.

We all get a little upset when we check in and see the same posts on oil changes, interior led light upgrades, and what offset someone in running....it's all about community so it's all good.

With 126k on my 09, I'm trying to get it running to 200k and can't do it without leaning on some of the members here with more experience and information (even though alot of them have moved on)

 

I think you and I are saying the same thing in different words.

Right out of high school I got a job as an electrician in a steel mill while I was attending Purdue University. One on my jobs was to tend batteries for electric lift trucks that were transporting coils of steel. These were big trucks capable of lifting and moving up to 70,000 pound coils of steel. The battery was about 4' x 6' x 3.5' tall. I forget now how many thousand pounds each one of them weighed. We took the batteries out of the trucks on demand with an overhead crane. They usually came in for a replacement after every 12 hours or so of operation. We had a total of 26 charging stations and at any time about 2/3 of them had batteries on them being charged or maintained.

Every so often one of the dumb truck operators would run one down or park one outside and leave sit there in the winter cold. When they finally got the lift truck recovered and towed in to our motor room we would replace the battery with a warm one and send them on their way.

The problem was with the cold removed one. We would put it on charge and it would take 4 to 6 hours to get it warmed up enough to take a charge at a normal rate. So instead of our normal charging time of about 6 to 8 hours it took us about 12 to 14 hours to get a cold one back to full charge again. During the initial 4 to 6 hours the battery was slowly taking some charge but most of the power consumed was heating the battery back to a temperature where it would take a charge at a normal rate. We use to crank up the charging voltage to around 2.7 volts per cell on a cold battery to speed up the warming process. Normal charging voltage was 2.4 to 2.3 volt range. Fully charged maintenance charge was 2.2 volts per call.

 

N9cv, thanks for sharing your story. Very interesting.

I haven't had a single battery-related hiccup in our '09. I did learn that the battery has almost no reserve capacity when I forgot to turn off the light in the hatch area one night. Dead as a doornail in the morning.

Cheers.

 

iirc SS sold his car after racking up like 200k miles...

 

My daughter had an 09 Fit that never had the battery replaced and it started fine at -19 F last winter. It was still good when she totaled the car on July 6th or this year. So that battery lasted 5 years with no problem. She now has an 11 Fit also with the original battery. So that one is going on 4 years now.

I would like to see a larger capacity battery in her Fit like the 51R but we have never had to replace a Fit battery in any of our Fits so I'll wait until hers needs one before going that route. In all of my vehicles, when battery replacement time comes, I always install the largest capacity battery that will fit in them.

 

When we 1st started having problems with our batt I did some research and found out that Honda had a big problem with the batts going dead just sitting on their lot. There were so many of them that they could not get enuf batts to replace them all and they had to wait for replacement batts. Maybe not all were bad or just if you don't drive enuf the tiny batt will not handle the load. What ever we have had major problems. I just don't understand why they put such a small batt in the car. What's the savings compared to customer loyalty. We bought 3 Hondas in 3 years from the dealer (2 new).
Thanks God for this forum.


How do you post pics so I can show how I mounted the new 51r. Thanks, Mike

 

This is at the bottom of the page saying I cannot post attachments
How do I change it? When I click post reply there is no manage attachments on the bottom. Thanks, Mike
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