Gas only crusade

The hybrid battery starts the engine... No hybrid battery, no engine... If you have DIY repair skills and like learning about and working on cars you might be able to study all the forums on Prius Chat and repair it yourself for a relatively low cost...

 

Yeah you likely only have a failing battery, not failed. How many miles on it btw?

 

Yes Prius has Two batteries... The 12v starts up all the computers, lights, accessories and the High voltage battery functions as the starter for the combustion engine. So if you can still drive your car it means you still have use of your HV battery. Soon as the computers decides you can no longer use the hybrid battery and the engine turns off the car can't be started. But if you disconnect the 12v battery for 5 minutes the car will forget that it shut off use of the HV battery and you might be able to get a little further down the road before it realizes that it needs to shut off access to the HV to protect car from further damage.

 

Now if you are driving a moderate speed, where the gasoline engine is running between 1500 and like 3800 rpm, where you are still traveling at a constant, decent speed, you may get pretty far. At these speeds, the ICE is turning MG1 fast enough to keep up with MG2’s electric demands. As soon as the needs of MG2 exceed the output of MG1, the computers will shut you down.

 

A regenerated or refurbished battery bought from a company is just somebody else's failed battery which has been given a quick repair. Do not expect that to last. There are a few hobbyists who spend the time & effort to properly test & balance a used pack.

The recommended options are either a new Toyota pack or, if you are a do-it-yourself person, @2k1Toaster here sells a kit of new cells that basically gives you a new pack for less money. His website is in my signature.He charges $1600 delivered in the US. I do not know the charge to ship to Mexico instead.

 

Yes, that's mostly true... But there's plenty of legitimate mechanics out their doing high quality and very thorough rebuilds. Trick is figuring out which ones do the job correctly and which ones are hacks. If I were you I'd go to hybridautomotive.com website and start that research by finding mechanics on their map who are using their pro machine / certified re-seller of their reconditioning service.

 

900 miles? i wouldn't risk it

 

They probably already decided over 2 months ago.

 

poly, but i read through o/p's responses and didn't see a decision

 

OP is probably stranded somewhere on the road as they posted but didn’t read the responses.

Just kidding, I hope that didn’t happen.

 

Your crusade isn’t really all that crazy. After all, back in July I took off on my own crusade. To put a Gen 4 ICE into my Gen 3. There were a lot of people who said it couldn’t be done. But after almost 6 months and 5400 miles, I can say that it was a success. Seems like you could find a wrecked one with a good hybrid battery and save it.

 

This is awesome... Did you post about this? Got any pics or links about some of the challenges? Isn't the Gen4 and Gen3 exhaust system incompatible in some ways?

 

The thread “Engine swap question” details my exploits in the changeover. Basically from the block to the oil pan, a 2ZR-FXE is all the same. The head, specifically the coolant connection to the head is the difference. So I rebuilt my head with the parts from the newer head and assembled it all like a jigsaw puzzle.

 

Here is the thread, I believe.

Engine swap question | PriusChat