Busbar Replacement

looks much better

 

There are companies that sell these bus bar type things with anti-corrosion stuff already built onto the metal etc etc there's all kinds of stuff you can do You can get anti-corrosive white looking grease stuff that you can wipe on the bus bars before you make the assemblies that will help stay off moisture CRC makes a red thin film battery spray when I put the new battery in my '09 I sprayed that narrow strip of the bus bars their nuts and all that with this red spray not heavily just the light glaze across and back on both sides I don't live in a seriously wet state but the Prius is like a terrarium kind of reminiscent of the American motors Pacer so I make sure that anything that goes in the car could possibly take on water or is sealed up to not take on the water because it's very possible it could get wet or damp in the Prius in North Carolina

 

Can bus bar replacement be accomplished without pulling the whole battery out of the car? Is that the way to go?

 

In the gen 3 I think the way the battery lays you could possibly unbolt the bus bars with a quarter inch drive ratchet set up but you would be working in semi-tight spaces bent over in the back of your hatch kneeling on the back of the back seat etc etc etc four bolts or whatever it is and you're sliding the whole battery right out of the trunk laying it on your roll around workbench and wheeling it over and your stationary workbench now you have a whole l-shaped top to work on You can walk behind both sides of the battery all of that just makes for much quicker more comfortable work but if you want to do it like that you could if I was going to do that I'd get my 9-year-old to crawl in there and teach him how to unbolt the stuff because he's so small

 

You could also clean the bus bars.
This almost looks like magic cleaning.
Youtube
Toyota Prius Hybrid Battery: Cleaning the Copper Sheets

Don't forget a good pair of chopsticks.
my2cents

 

Just dropped in kids tumbler bright n new look . But some of these things you can buy now come with coated nuts and bars if that's a thing I don't know

 

You can remove/replace the bus bars with the battery in the car. Disconnect the 12 volt battery and the traction battery orange disconnect plug before you start. Leather gloves recommended.

 

Regarding the nuts, I see there are two types of nuts. Do you know which would be better with less corrosion? Medium carbon steel with zinc plating or medium carbon steel with nickel plating?

 

Ah, that's exactly the question I was just going to ask!

 

I ordered these
Nickel-Plated, Copper BUS BARS & SS NUTS compatible with Nexcell Lithium Battery

 

Nickel-Plated, Copper BUS BARS & SS NUTS compatible with Nexcell Lithium Battery

 

I give up. For some reason, the forum will not let me post a link.
Search the above on Amazon. They are nickel-plated copper bus plates and smooth nuts.
Did I say, "smooth nuts"?

 

I work as an R&D engineer and developed a wide flange nut that is very much like the OEM, except it is stainless steel. Everything you can find on the market is standard DIN6923 flange nuts, and the flange on those is not as wide as OEM, resulting in a different pressure profile on the battery module terminals. Stainless is naturally corrosion-resistant, so you don't need to worry about plating withstanding the corrosive electrolyte environment. Depending on where the car was driven, zinc-plated nuts sometimes do not hold up well. In the picture below you can see on the left the battery from one of my customers who had his car worked on by someone 22 months prior, and the corrosion was already eating up the zinc-plated nuts.



In the picture below you can see how the flange on the ACENBAY nut is covering a much larger surface area compared to a typical DIN 6923 nuts


Below is a pressure distribution profile comparison between a wide flange nut and a typical DIN6923 M5 nuts

 

Please keep in mind, as the listing name suggests, this set is for Nexcell Lithium Battery. Standard OEM NiMH and Nexcell Lithium Battery use the same hardware, but Nexcell Lithium Battery requires less quantity. If you are working with a stock OEM battery, this kit will not be enough to complete the job, but there is a listing for an original NiMH battery as well, both, on Amazon and eBay.
I myself use Nexcell Lithium Battery in my daily driver, it is amazing, and I highly recommend it.

 

So far the CRC red spray on my tumbled.. gold Toyota nutz is holding well . The bus bars are the nickel plated jobbies.. didn't see any wider flange nutz specs.