Honda Insight Battery

At 121,000 miles, the IMA light came on in my 2000 Honda Insight, indicating there might be a problem with the battery. The warranty expired at 75,000 miles, so I was nervous. Before I even made it to the Honda dealer, however, I discovered Honda had extended the warranty to 150,000 miles or 10 years. With fingers crossed, I visited the dealer to have them run a computer check on the IMA signal. The result was the battery needed to be replaced (for the second time, btw) but I would pay zero dollars. Nice

I thought I would share images of the battery being swapped out.


The battery sits in the hatchback area just behind the seats.


Before you get to the battery, you encounter the casing...


...and this sign. I asked the mechanic why there wasn't a third option: "but if you know what you are doing, you should be fine." Only two options seemed overly forbidding and grim, to me.


To make things simple, all you had to do was toss this baby (which looked just like a light switch) similar to a breaker in your basement and voilà, you were ready to go.


With the case removed.


The battery was shipped overnight from a place in California...


...in this case...


...behold in all its geeky magnificence.


...and all its wires.


Although most of the wires were for the computer system.


and these were the only spots for the positive and negative terminals.


if you look closely, you can see that it is really an array of many separate D-Cell-like batteries all lined up. Pretty cool.

I drove it home the same day. Honda seems to want these 2000 Insights to last, because I am supposed to take it back in a week for an updated computer and a new adapter on the battery (all free).

So far it seems to be driving just fine, thank you.