Who to choose for Refurbished HV battery

Still nothing from the Prius Rebuilders / Falcon Hybrid Solutions, not that I expect any form that sorry outfit.
(Sorry I had to get that in).
No takers on the POS pack complete I listed on Ebay so now I am going to offer the individual cells.
I am going to make another set of measurements on the voltages after it has sat for two weeks a and post them here and on the listings for the cells on Ebay and let people choose which cell they want.
Out of the 38 cells one was very bar, one was marginally better and two were weak which means that of the vaunted quality checks and test ing from Prius Rebuilders / Falcon Hybrid Solutions, Mark and Abe Sokol they have a failure rate of a little over 10%. Or more correctly a Failure rate of 2.6% for outright failure and 10.5% for very marginal, but very prone to cause problems.
This almost guarantees that the battery will either fail outright very soon after installation or have very poor performance and fail soon after the warranty runs out.
Of course with Prius Rebuilders / Falcon Hybrid Solutions the warranty means very little anyway.
Also I think that the voltage measurement in as operated condition even with some weak cells is a pretty good indication of the quality of the cells. Since the same charging current must pass through each cell in turn the resultant state of charge has to be a pretty good indicator.
It is certain to show a cell that is in poor condition. I think that all of the matching is overblown compared with actual operating conditions. If each cell shows close to the same voltage after operating in the car then I think that they are pretty well matched. There is a minimum voltage for pairs of cells that the computer looks at to determine health of the battery. As long as you are within that the battery will operate and be charged. If you have weak cells then the hybrid charge /discharge cycle will not be optimum, but the car will run and mileage won't be too bad.
My "new" battery can take full acceleration from 0 - 80 mph and not drop below the top normal SOC. The battery will charge a little longer before it cycles from charge to discharge like it does when in normal operation, but it does not take long to get there.
I think my 2010 pull out will give good service. The voltages were similar to the good cell voltages from the POS Prius Rebuilder / Falcon Hybrid Solutions battery, but in that case the poorly selected weak and failing cells kept it from performing as it should.
Never buy From Prius Rebuilders / Falcon Hybrid Solutions their quality control and battery theory is poor and they do not stand behing their product and are very slow / unable to respond to customer needs. If you have problems you are on your own and your money will have been wasted. There is no concern for their customers. Still no work out of them! Stay away from Prius Rebuilders / Falcon Hybrid Solutions ans Mark Sokol and Abe Sokol. They are not good for their words and promises!

 

+1 for this post from redbarron55:

I repaired my 2005 Prius HV battery DIY-style. I am using Torque, configured to show:

"HVB Min V" --- voltage value for block with lowest instantaneous V
"HVB Max V" --- voltage of block with highest instantaneous V
"HVB Min #" --- block number (1 through 14) of the block with lowest instantaneous V
"NiMH Delta" --- voltage differential between lowest and highest block
​

The difference between my highest and lowest block is usually 0.1V, never higher than 0.2V. The Torque gauge "HVB Min #" (block # with lowest voltage) constantly jumps around: 3,10,12,2,6,8,13... etc). I suspect a weak block would cause "HVB Min #" to stay mostly at one value: That value would be the number of the weak block.

I changed out 2 modules in my HV battery. One module had a permanently shorted cell in it (6.6V). I changed 1 other module (100mV lower than the other 27 when bench tested). But I didn't do any detailed "module balancing."

I've seen no DTC codes for 250 miles after my repair. The car has been driving nicely and mpg is > 40. I suspect mpg would be better except that I did some "force charging" (brake + throttle) to observe how high I could get the SOC to go. Also I discovered that my tire pressure was a bit low: I usually run 42/40 lb, but it was only 35 lb when I checked today -- oops!

I set up Torque to display a graph of "HV current amps," and also a gauge with "HV SOC" that shows the %. The Torque SOC gauge is faster and more responsive than the Prius MFD SOC display.

Torque's graph of HV battery current is really, really cool: Braking may generate 80-100 amps of charging current for several seconds. There's also a 1 second long pulse of 45 amps drain from the HV battery each time the ICE starts up. I observed steady-state drain of 20-40 amps in EV mode at speeds of around 35 mph.

What's more interesting to me is that (most of the time) there is NOT very much current flowing in/out of the HV battery. It's typically less than +/- 15 amps. It's often near zero when cruising at a steady speed.

I fully agree with redbarron55 here too.

I also suggest that a device like Torque (which displays this data while driving) is "good enough" to identify most HV battery issues.

Torque cannot monitor each individual module within a given block. But if Torque consistently shows ONE block with a lower V, then that data will serve to ID the 2 modules that are suspect. These 2 modules should then be checked first (with a voltmeter) after removing the HV battery from car. Plus, if there is only one block that consistently reads weak, then one could purchase a few used modules on eBay (before taking the HV battery out of the car) and have them ready to install into the HV battery.

My recommendation is that those of us who decide to DIY our HV battery repair should get Torque first and use it to observe what's happening before taking our HV battery out of the car.

I also recommend using Torque to monitor "refurbished" HV batteries that are purchased from NAPA, Dorman, or other vendors. I think that Torque will be able to show "weaknesses" before an HV battery fails so far that the car produces a DTC code. I recommend Torque for closely monitoring the first 100 miles with a refurbished HV battery. If anything doesn't look perfect, then follow up with the HV battery vendor right away, BEFORE the problem gets bad!

Best regards, EB

 

I think you can monitor each module block over time if you like. Look at this Google Doc, it has the PID etc required.
Torque knows how to read a csv file

 

Yes, that's right. I set up a custom Torque gauge panel to show me the voltage from each module (1-14). But I almost immediately realized that all 14 are nearly identical (as they should be, of course!).

So now I'm using a Torque display panel that shows only the "lowest module voltage" and the "delta V." I'm also planning to try using the Torque "data recording" mode to track data while I drive so that I can analyze it later.

I am really enjoying Torque! It's very flexible and the displays look great.

-EB

 

I agree. Tremendous value for people with an Android device.

However, I've come around to the idea that for real trouble-shooting it is best to have the VCI cable and Toyota software. I refuse to put Windows on my Macintosh so I'll have to buy an old netbook.

 

The torque and the bluetooth module is the ticket.
I agree with GDANNER that this is the best way to keep track of the battery especially a DIY unit.
Personally I think that as is usually the case the modules will fail over time, but the death rate for each cell would be similar, but with outliers that fail first and some that fail last. If this were not the case there would be NO rebuilt batteries for someone like Prius Rebuilders / Falcon Hybrid Solutions to rebuild so poorly. All of the cells would be bad instead of 10.5%.
By the way NO ONE should any business with Prius Rebuilders / Falcon Hybrid Solutions or any of their other identities.
They still decline to make good on the POS that they sold me. Wait a month to ship the original bad battery, Bad on arrival, got it to work for a month then failed permanently, Wait another month for action gave up and got two cells replaced for $400 and only after that did Abe contact me. Still no refund and today I went on Chat on the Prius Rebuilders / Falcon Hybrid Solutions site. Still refuse to make me whole. Offered the $400 and I send them the battery etc.
I think I will enjoy continuing to post the facts about their company to help protect other potential customers from them.
I think the only way to recoup any real money is to list the modules in Ebay individually and describe how poorly Prius Rebuilders / Falcon Hybrid Solution treats their customers in the body of the ad.
Did I say never do any business with Prius Rebuilders / Falcon Hybrid Solutions?

 

I will start posting the cells out of the GEN I battery I bought from Prius Rebuilders / Falcon Hybrid Solutions that ended up having 2 bad cells and 2 weak cells and was basically useless and after a month no response for a warranty replacement. A worthless company with noproduct support and very poor quality control.
I have 36 good modules ( I bought two to replace the two bad one and two weak ones ).
I will be posting them to ebay tonight and including the story as to why I have them.
This is the last chance for Prius Rebuilders / Falcon Hybrid Solutions to make me whole before I get really busy making certain that no one buys anything from them!
All it takes is one bad cell and the entire battery is bad. No better than the weakest link.
Their matching is making sure that all of the modules are equally weak and work together. Better is to have all of them good and work together!
I guess they failed on my battery having 34 that measure good and hold a charge. Even the the overall battery is still bad!
Never buy anything from Prius Rebuilders / Falcon Hybrid Solutions or Mark Sokol or Abe Sokol. Their word cannot be trusted. Their product is not good, their quality control is poor and their warranty may as well be non existent!

 

Don't tell me your campaign for the last month hasn't proven successful. I like the "last chance" offer though, but I seriously doubt you'll hear from them ever again

 

I have a mini VCI and an old laptop. I'll be using it soon and will post the results that it gives for my DIY-repaired 2005 HV battery.

My car continues to run perfectly!

-EB

 

Well I just got my HV battery replaced by Tomas (from Tampa/Clearwater), and he uses Cardone Batteries. I will report back if there are any problems with this battery.

 

what battery? I can't stop staring at the girl on your avatar

 

card one? sp?

 

Hybrid Drive Batteries Remanufactured I CARDONE

the battery came with a 3 year warranty.

i looked at a local reconditioner here in south florida, but his price was %50 of the Cardone and only 6 months of warranty (plus i would be out of a car for 2-3 days). so I went with the re-manufactured unit.

Tomas Zakarka installed it for me and he drove all the way from Tampa to South Fla. to fix my car at my house. Great guy and really knowledgeable.

 

is he tampaprius.com?MERGEDlooks good, where are they out of? how much? warranty?

 

Wanna bet?

 

no I don't wanna bet you, I have nothing to gain from your misery

 

You would have lost anyway.

 

oh this is news.....good news?

 

Pretty much.
Perseverance pays off
I should be nice now.
Maybe nicer.
I consider pushing for vendors to do the right thing to be a public service.

 

I don't know about how happy I would be in your situation. I mean, your car can be rigged to blow up or explode now.

It's like returning restaurant food........you know it'll come back contaminated.