2007 New Toyota Hybrid Battery - Self Install?

If you buy the Dorman, there's nothing to swap over. It's very straight forward and pretty safe (you don't need to open up the battery pack). There was a video posted by Dorman online, not sure it's there anymore. But surely you can call and they'll give you the link to the install video. I would say most would be able to do it in about 2 hours.......just preferably not while drinking.

 

I would guess about $300~400. There's videos on what's involved. It's good to have a helper, for getting the batteries out and in, if you value your back.

With reasonable cost install, I'd be inclined to get professional install. Might help if there's any warranty issues, down the road.

(But then, I'm the guy who's paying someone $125 to come over tomorrow to remove a wasp nest. ... If they show up in Bermuda shorts and flip flops I'm gonna be pissed!)

 

Maybe you can get an extension handle for the wasp sprays. Park your car close by, spray the nest and jump in your car. They die pretty instantly.

Alternatively, you can get rid of them by smoking them out.......smoke the nest and they all come out. then you just scrape off the nest and that's it!

 

Drive-by shooting then?

I just have this hunch it would end badly. It's strange too, the nest wasn't there a day or two back AFAIK, we're out a lot walking the dog, go right by the spot daily. I thought about DIY for a second or two, but they seem really aggressive.

Sorry, completely off-topic, btw.

 

I just removed my '06 pack for a PA080 code and as far as DIY it's a fairly straight forward job. I did it by myself including getting it out of the car and it took about 90 minutes going slow.

You should be able to reduce the dealership labor chargers by a fair amount by taking out everything yourself that is required for removal. Items like the rear trim, hatch items, rear seat backs, etc. And on the flip side, none of these items will be needed to be installed by the dealer so double the labor savings. Basically the tech will only need to remove the bolts holding the case to the floor, the two orange HV leads and a couple of harness plugs (IIRC). Basically 15 minutes!

Here's the best video (except the poor audio) I've seen for removal from the car. Shot in almost real time by a seasoned tech, it takes him about 10 minutes!

 

The new batt requires the ecu bay to be transferred over. That adds about 20-30 minutes.

 

You can tell he has done this before

 

I'm about to replace my battery in my 2007 for the 3rd time (original battery replaced with a Dorman which has failed twice under warranty so far.) First time took me about 2 hours going slow start to finish. Second time was about an hour. I'm going to see if I can do it in under 45 minutes this time.

I did it all by myself, but it really would help to have a friend to assist with picking the old battery up out of the car and wrestling the new one into position. If you do it by yourself, make sure to lift safely.

Process is not difficult at all, just make sure to keep all the bolts you remove organized so you know what goes where. Like S Keith mentioned, if you decide to go with a new Toyota battery (I highly recommend it) you'll also need to swap over the ECU from the old battery to the new before returning the old battery for the core.

If you do decide to get a Dorman, I will say their customer service is excellent and they never gave me any problem returning failed batteries, but every time I've gotten a battery from them it's has taken from 7 to 14 days to get it shipped in. So factor in any possible cost for renting/borrowing a car while you wait.

 

I'm wondering why there's such a high failure rate with the Dorman rebuilts. Maybe someone with techstream and hookup one of these replacement units and see the reading right out of the package.....see if the packs are balanced.

 

I have Techstream VCI and did that with the 2nd Dorman unit after the first one failed. Modules varied under load by a consistent .3 to .5v just installed so not very balanced. I knew the second battery was going to fail fairly quickly since module 8 would always read over 1 volt lower than all the rest on startup after the car would sit overnight, but would charge up to spec within a couple of minutes. Got a lot of P0A80s in pending state over the 3 months I had that battery. Finally threw the actual P0A80 code along with a high delta SOC (45%) after I came back from a week long trip where the car stayed at home n the garage, and module 8 was reading over 2.5v lower than the rest. Currently waiting on the RMA for that battery. Got it in mid April and failed in mid June (~2k miles)

The 1st Dorman unit I got to replace my original failed battery had decent stats after installed. All modules were within .2 of each other even under load. That one lasted from June 2015 to April 2016 (~20k miles) when it failed due to high delta SOC, but I can't remember if there was any one module to blame or if they all just got out of wack from each other.

The Prius is my beater/experimental car although I do put a fair number of miles on it every month and it's been ultra reliable other than the battery and oil consumption. I do worry about one of the remanufactured batteries dying while on a long trip tho. I was really hoping a major 3rd party vendor would have come out with replacement modules by now. I'm sure Dorman does the best they can, but those cells are just plain old at this point.

If this next one fails quickly, I'm going to see if they can just give me my money back (or some prorated portion thereof) and get a new Toyota battery. Either that or do one more warranty replacement and sell the car and get a Gen3.

 

check with ericbecky on installing a new battery, he says it's fairly complicated.

 

Somebody needs to Youtube a failed HV battery swap to new Toyota battery for those that are considering DIYing a new Yota battery.

 

Hmmm. This will expose how easy the process is. Only 3 nuts holding the ecu and relay compartment

YouTube is ruining the profits for the companies that do this type of work. So nobody in the industry will make this video