Replace Hybrid Battery -- Where to buy dead battery to repair?

Hmm. Good point about customers lacking full coverage. In this case you're talking about business
liability insurance. Even when someone does have "ton of cash", it's normally unwise to self-insure.
Since you mention it, I'll let my insurance agent know. I probably need to add a policy that's similar to
what other automobile mechanics have for liability insurance.

 

Guys, first, I now have a battery to play with. Bought for $500 out of a working car whose gas engine froze.

My first step is to test this battery.

In my personal experience with engineering, the most important step for any kind of engineering work from design to construction to repairs is very accurate and thorough testing to verify quality.

I am absolutely unimpressed by the "light bulb" or "heating element" load testing that you see on youtube.

So I'm studying in depth information on Ni-MH type of batteries technology and how to recondition and test them thoroughly.

Personally, when selling a reconditioned battery I want to be able to provide a detailed report on the SOH (State of Health) of the battery.

So for me, the process will be first test the battery to determine any reconditioning or replacements needed. Do those, and then keep testing and repeating until the battery tests excellently.

I'm not decided on the best testing tools yet. But there are a variety of good ones out there.

 

After studying, the battery testing needs to show the capacity of the battery as the most important measure of health.

It seems practical so far to use 3 Hitec X4 chargers which have 4 ports each for a total of 12 cells charging at a time.

However, since it's important to me to test and measure the capacity of the batteries to make sure they are still in good State of Health, the Hitex X4 gives out this data via USB to a PC software. But does that software accept 3 hitec inputs? Or will it requires 3 laptops to monitor the data.

 

Tell me about the one that can charge the entire pack at once?

Can it also report the battery condition in terms of it's capacity?

 

OMG

( The site won't let me post a link yet--probably thinks I'm an advertiser.)

That's the ideal kind of battery tester. It can test / charge / discharge / cycle / recondition
the battery but it feeds the power when discharging back into the A/C power grid so that
there isn't any problem with heat dissipation. It's programmable and gives reports on
the battery health.

According to the ad, it does everything needed for HV batteries and does it properly.

This thing must cost a fortune since they don't even list the price on the site.

I will call in the morning to find out.

 

On further research, those are high end test equipment meant for laboratories that are testing EV and HEV technology by doing simulations of real driving conditions. Certainly will be far to pricey.

I found Midtronics has a shop tools for working on HV batteries. They have an HB battery tester that's $1,750. And they have an HV battery charger / discharger / balancer. I'm impressed and think that they might be closer to something that I can afford and also be the right -- serious and professional -- tools for testing batteries and reconditioning.

I can't find a price on the the battery service tool online. I'll try during business hours. It's looking like more than my estimate of $600 to $800 for tools. The service tool is likely a few thousand dollars.

But the ability to do truly professional quality testing and servicing of HV batteries will be a plus to avoid frequent failures like the guy that did my daughter's car.

 

By the way, in studying about ni-mh batteries, they should "in theory" last forever. But there are variables and imperfections in the manufacturing process such that some modules may gradually degrade where others can continue for very, very long time.

So it actually seems beneficial over the years to recondition batteries that have been used and proven to be good quality through use.
By gradually replacing defective modules with others that are used and proven over time, you should eventually get to a very long lasting battery. Is my understanding seriously flawed? Please only answer if you deeply understand the chemistry of nimh batteries.

 

So I decided to purchase 3 HiTex X4 AC smart chargers. That's $663 on Amazon and will be delivered in 2 days with Prime.

It turns out those show the mAh discharge which is the capacity to verify that condition or State of Health of the battery.

These will be more hassle to use than the more expensive midtronics shop tool for servicing HV batteries. But it's affordable for my first learning experience. After we sell a few reconditioned batteries, then I can upgrade the shop tools to make it easier.

 

It's from a 2004. Why photos? It looks very much like very other 04 to 09 hybrid battery to me that I've seen in photos. I'm a little lazy about taking and uploading photos to sites like this. Sorry. Is there some quick and easy way from iPhone to get photos on here? I'm not even motivated enough to Google it.

 

Hmmm I already like that it's 80 Watts per channel so it will charge faster. I just canceled the Amazon order for the Hitec. <--- Oops...mistake. It's 80A total which is 20A per channel.

What's more important than the capacity? Internal resistance is a way of measuring if the battery is failed. Voltage matters and heat and such but what is more important than capacity measured in mAh discharge rate?

 

Fortunately for me there are amazing people like you who love to teach learners like me who have sooooo much to learn.

Thanks!!!

 

It's late. 1 am here. The comparison is that Hitec is 200W at 50W per channel which is very slow charging. But Turnigy is 1200W at 300W per channel which means approximately 6 times faster charging. WOW!!

 

OMG the Reaktor also can discharge back into a 12 Volt battery which solves the heat problem during discharging. Wow.

 

Yes. especially since it's so late and my brain and now officially fried.

FYI, Brad, I ordered the Turnigy that you recommended. They shipping via DHL.

So I'm going offline for the night and will take the next few days to study those posts by Steve and you also and study the Turnigy manual so I'm somewhat prepared when it does arrive.

This is my weakness, I LOVE learning stuff like this so much. So thanks Brad.