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Review of Acenbay busbars/nuts.

Discussion in 'Gen 2 Prius Main Forum' started by Prius92, Aug 5, 2024.

  1. Prius92

    Prius92 Active Member

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    Only gripe is they are kinda costly, at a little over twice the price of other kits. However the quality is excellent. The plating is mint and doesn't seem to have any defects like you'd see on cheaply plated items.

    Nuts are true 304 stainless. They do not stick to a magnet.
     
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  2. AzusaPrius

    AzusaPrius Senior Member

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    Should have used my promo code "azusa" to save 10%
     
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  3. PriusCamper

    PriusCamper Senior Member

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    I've interacted with Vadim often... He's doing great work! Especially for his work manufacturing and selling voltage sensor harnesses for Gen3 Prius. He's the only person who sells those as a part. Toyota forces you to buy a whole Gen3 battery pack if you need that part.

    Because of this Vadim is an incredibly valuable doer for the PriusChat community. And obviously when it comes to selling busbars and nuts there's way too many vendors to compete with on price and he can't win if he wants to go for quality over price... But if you want to support a vendor who does more for Prius owners than other vendors, please support him.

    Lastly, Vadim doesn't do social media so he needs help promoting his work to come from us!

    Hybrid Battery Bus Bars | ACENBAY, LLC
     
    #3 PriusCamper, Aug 5, 2024
    Last edited: Aug 6, 2024
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  4. Tombukt2

    Tombukt2 Senior Member

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    And who manufactures these. No there's a company that makes these you can't just make nuts and bolts in your basement not any kind of easily anyway I know a little bit about that kind of tooling I used to buy hollow chrome bolts and nuts there were some of the finest maid on the planet now they don't exist anymore and I certainly know why. But this is interesting I've seen this advertisement before but I mean smelting and molten metal and making nuts and bus bars and things like that is all generally speaking I wouldn't think a small affair but yeah very cool but at the end of the day these batteries I'm pulling down at 30,000 mi or close to it don't look that unreasonable for 13 years or so of not being touched or moved so I'd like to see these at 12 years in $240,000 mi and so on Not what they look like on assembly.
     
  5. Prius92

    Prius92 Active Member

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    They still make holo-krome fasteners...
    Holo-Krome | Product Line - HOLO-KROME

    Making nuts isn't easy. I doubt they actually make them. They look way too nice to not be mass produced.

    Country of origin is listed as China. But that could be the nuts.

    Making the bus bars wouldn't be too hard. Copper is easy to work with as it's softer than steel.

    You'd need a metal punching machine ($1.5-$4k) and then machine the die for the bus bars and get the right thickness of copper sheet. A nickel plating machine can be had for $1,500 from China.

    It would probably be cheaper to send the measurements of the bus bars to a tool and die factory in China and then have them nickel plated.
     
  6. Tombukt2

    Tombukt2 Senior Member

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    Yes I have friends down the street with this kind of equipment including screw machines in their machine shop right out back of their house I would say they have about 1.5 million worth of equipment jig boare machines that is the more jig bore things like that I've ordered metal stock before from large suppliers here in the US and on and on and on anyway like I say it would be a real undertaking to be manufacturing these any kind of locally without it being on a large scale and doing lots of selling or something or you have plenty of money to burn on your hobby.
     
  7. PriusCamper

    PriusCamper Senior Member

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    Yeah... big companies produce these and you get huge price breaks if you buy by the pallet or truck load and then they are re-sold by vendors who try to sell at a lower price than other vendors. That's typically how the fastener market operates.

    My point about ACENbay is he's doing more than that for the Toyota hybrid community by producing parts that no one else is producing, and if you can afford to spend a small amount more, please support his business.
     
    #7 PriusCamper, Aug 6, 2024
    Last edited: Aug 6, 2024
  8. PriusCamper

    PriusCamper Senior Member

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    These days bus bar makers use CNC machines...
     
  9. Tombukt2

    Tombukt2 Senior Member

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    Good to see hollo Chrome is still in business. Back in the '80s and '90s they were one of the premier fastener manufacturers I worked in a machine shop and we bought lots of fasteners from them for automotive and other machine tool uses nice nice stuff I wonder what they making in the size range they should have some really nice black oxide finished nuts that are quite corrosion resistant I would imagine Not sure about the serrations on the flat but possibly