HELP - 12v battery on backorder

That's certainly possible. I have read a quite few PP owners complaining about the very early demiss of the 12v battery. Some of those are likely attributable to pandemic restriction and reduced use of the cars or operator errors such as excessive use of accessories on ACC mode or by keeping the charging cord plugged in while being parked for a long time, but there may be some lots of defective or at the least not fully charged 12v batteries that got installed in some PPs. Or as you speculated, they may have sat for a long time at the dealer so that the 12v battery was discharged at the time of the sale. My understanding is that once the lead-acid battery is allowed to drain below 12.0v, it is very difficult to replenish it to a full charge.

I just checked my 2021 PP after the last check and sitting on my driveway for ~40 hours. It is now reading 12.41volt. That is about the lowest number I saw on my 2020 PP. I will keep checking to see if it goes even lower if I don't drive, or if it goes up to a full charge after I drive.

 

Oh yeah, for sure. We bought our "new" 2010 in November of that year. The dealership REALLY tried to mask it, but we found out the battery was as dead as a door nail, made a new battery a condition of sale.

Found out later, looking at the decal in driver's door, the build-date was August 2009...

 

Get your battery tested. Better than relying on voltage readings alone, I would think.

 

When this happened with my 2018 the dealer put in an order for a new battery under warranty and Toyota USA actually interfered to cancel the order and instructed the dealer not to replace the battery. From there on out no dealer would touch it.

Not sure what's going on with Toyota and their 12V batteries.

 

Or acquire such tester. Prosumer level testers are around $50~80. I have Solar BA5; see there are new models in that line. Ancel is another name you see a lot.

 

CTEK makes some nice battery chargers, and I've gotten my monies worth from it since I bought it years ago, but it won't do a jump start and you're talking about waiting hours to get the car going again. Anyone got a recommendation for a smart battery charger that can do a jump start (I've got a Tacoma that's seldom used and the battery has gone flat on it as a result)?

 

If you already own a CTEK battery charger, then you don't need a smart battery charger that can do a jump start which usually has either a built-in battery pack or has the ability to send a large Amp from the wall. They can get fairly expensive and bulky. All you need is a small lithium-battery jump pack. For a PP, all you need is the smallest unit on the market, but if you plan to use it for other vehicles or keep the pack as an emergency battery bank, then a larger one may be better suited. I have the following three lithium packs, one for each car, but the smallest one in PP. The prices are current price I found online, but I paid about a half of that price for each unit when they were on sale.

DBPOWER 2000A/20800mAh Portable Car Jump Starter (UP to 8.0L Gas/6.5L Diesel Engines) 12V Auto Lithium-Ion Battery Booster with Smart Clamp Cables, Quick Charge, and LED Flashlight currently $89.49 at Amazon

DBPOWER 1000A Portable Car Jump Starter (up to 7.0L Gas, 5.5L Diesel Engine)，12V Auto Battery Booster with LCD Screen Clamp Cables, USB Quick Charge, LED Flashlight currently $71.99 at Amazon

Anker ROAV - Jump Starter Pro currently not available at Amazon, but a similar but even smaller mAh and peak Amp model sold ~$100 in retail stores in the US. Mine is model:R3130011 with 12,800mAh/with 1,000A peak current

 

I need a charger that can do a jump start on my Tacoma that sits in a parking spot on my court. I don't want a battery pack that needs to be maintained up to charge, even it it provides enough current for a jump.

I'm thinking of something like this: 85A 6V/12V Fully Automatic Battery Charger/Engine Starter - Schumacher Electric

 

My understanding is that you will still have to have a battery pack to work as a jumpstarter in most portable units. Old school jumpstarter all curried large 12v lead-acid battery inside of the housing. Today's lithium battery portable jump packs are a far better choice for that use. If you want a charger that can supply a large current to jump-start a truck, I guess, it can be used as a jump starter but can be very bulky and expensive.

I have a very old Schumacher "dumb" charger similar to this model that can be connected to AC and used as an engine starter in "Boost" mode at 50A. I had no problem starting my old Sienna minivan 3.3L V6 engine with a completely dead 12v battery in the middle of winter sub-zero temp, but I am not sure if 50A is large enough cranking power for your truck. Certainly, today, small lithium jump pucks have more amp than 50A.
https://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200697136_200697136

You can get one of those with 250Amp engine starting power... but... expensive and bulky, and still nowhere close to the peak 1000 Amp even the smallest lithium puck can deliver for starting the engine
https://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200712423_200712423

 

That should work if 85A is large enough for the starter motor in your truck. Still nowhere close to the lithium jump pack's 1000Amp rating, though. Just remember that if you use a charger like that on PP, then make sure to reduce the Amp on charging. Toyota recommends not to use a 12v battery charger larger than 5 Amp for the battery in the PP. Any charger that can supply more than 5 Amp of charging current will likely finish charging the battery quicker, but with a risk.

 

You'll still have to maintain the charge in your jump unit. Even lithium batteries self-discharge. If the unit even has a milliamp parasitic drain your unit may be dead in a month or two.

 

The type of charger/starter Mike wants does not have any battery inside. It is not a portable type. It must be connected to AC. It is a charger unit capable of sending a burst of a high amp to start the engine as well as charge and maintain the 12v battery. The engine starting amp in this category of engine starter ranges from 50A to 300A but units are bulkier than smaller 5A chargers. But surprisingly not as expensive as I thought they would be.

125A compact unit is $112 at Amazon
Schumacher DSR118 DSR ProSeries 125A 6V/12V Battery ...

Here is the bulkier 200A engine starter unit for $141 at Amazon.
Schumacher SC1353 Battery Charger with Engine Starter, Boost

 

Has anyone mentioned that driving won't recharge the Prime battery? The engine has neither a starter motor nor an alternator. Without a starter motor, Cold Cranking Amp rating is moot. Amp Hour capacity is usually not listed on a starter battery but would be highly useful for a Prime. Reserve capacity is the best we'll usually get.
Amp Hour = continuous amperage delivered for 20 hours at 80°F without falling below 10.5 volts.
Reserve Capacity = how many minutes the battery can deliver a constant current of 25 amps at 80°F without falling below the minimum voltage, 1.75 volts per cell (10.5 volts).

My 2017 Prime has the original battery. It is driven almost every day. While the traction battery charger is connected the 12v battery is being recharged with about 12.7 volts (100% of "12 Volt" battery capacity is 12.7v, but this is not enough to push a 100% charge into a battery.) After sitting overnight it reads about 12.3 v. Sometimes after a longer sit it shows 11.7 volts. And the car always goes.

Many modern electronically controlled battery chargers need some power from the battery to get the charger going. A battery that "won't take a charge" may end up OK but is too low to get the charger started. An old style charger may be needed for a brief time.

The battery size needed is BCA Group 140R, or H4, or LN1. East Penn/DEKA is the only BCA Group 140R U.S. battery maker I know of. These standard flooded cell batteries are sold under that label as well as O'Reilly and NAPA. 76 minute reserve capacity. About $160. An LN1 AGM battery is also a good choice. ACDelco has one for about $155 from Summit Racing or Rock Auto, 80 minute reserve capacity. (They say the LN1 AGM doesn't fit the Prime, but the dimensions look good to me.) Advance Auto Parts/CarQuest has their DieHard brand standard flooded cell 96 minute reserve capacity battery for $190. I don't know who makes it. Clarios (formerly Johnson Controls) makes most the Diehard batteries, but this one looks different. (Advance bought the DieHard label from Sears.) Toyota lists a price at the dealer of $386...if they have one.

 

I don't think there's a battery in the type of charger I linked to. Maybe it uses a capacitor? Schumacher has another one that puts out 100A.

On the Li jump packs, cah you keep it on a charger full time in the garage so it's always fully charged to jump start the car?

 

All-in-one may be a fools-mission. My 2 cents, separate components, for jump start, charging, and assessment are the way to go. My current arsenal is:

Clore JNC660 jump starter (I've NEVER needed to use it for our car)
CTEK Multi-US 4.3 charger (car practically LIVES on it)
Clore Solar BA5 (12 volt battery tester)

Clore recommends to plug in the JNC660 and fully recharge every 3 months, and/or after use. You can recharge it on-the-road: it comes with a cord with cig lighter plugs at both ends; you can lay it in the passenger foot well, plug it in while driving. I've never bothered with that, but I can see it being handy, say for tow truck drivers and the like. It has a pretty conventional looking AGM battery inside.

 

You don't need it to be fully charged all the time to jump-start. It has enough juice to start PP many, many times. Even for a most demanding starting job for say V8 engine in sub-zero temp, most of the packs have enough juice to start several times. Most manufacturers of lithium packs just like any battery pack care recommend recharging every 3 months or so. But, I have kept my lithium jump pack in a car for more than a year without touching it, and still kept near full charge based on the LED indicator. I intentionally keep it at around 80% charged rather than 100%. Today's lithium battery self-discharge very little if maintained at 70-80% level, I think.

 

The light bulb went on recently, during a power outage:

 

OK, maybe I'll get one of those. Also, it beats running a long extension cord out to the truck, although doesn't a jump pack have a lifetime where the batteries go bad? I've got an old Schumacher manual battery charger in the garage that I bought in the mid '70's that still works

 

All too well, in two PPs so far. I'm going to see if I can "revive" the battery with the CTEK to see if it's a degraded battery issue, or if the battery is fine and that's just the way the car charges it.

 

If it were solely for my PP, I would give some serious consideration to just making my own jump battery with 3 20A Sony 18650 batteries. If you keep them at 80% charge you'll have about 12V ready to go and the total cost of the batteries is like $20.