We/Eurton Electric have now successfully rewound 4 electric motor stators for the Prius Gen I. Our first windings now have over 16,000 miles and counting. At this stage we are not sure if this will be a viable market for us to pursue, but want all owners to know it can be done, when many said it could not. Gen II, II, IV should also be feasible as well. Our hope is to be able to offer this as an affordable option if an electric motor fails due to windings which seems to be the main problem. However these are difficult to do and we hope to be able to wind these more economically in the near future. Thought ever Prius owner should know John Eurton Electric
That is interesting, just wonder if there's a market...they go bad so infrequently and there seems to be an adequate salvage market--would the cost benefit be worth it? In any case, if/when you're ready to go commercial be sure to contact the site owner, [email protected], to become a commercial sponsor of the site if you'd like to market here.
If you've read the Argonne/Oakridge papers and/or looked at some of the Prius documentation over the years, you'll know that Toyota moved from wiring the four sections in parallel to wiring them in series between gen I and gen II. The community knows of a few gen I transaxles that wound up with burnt windings and ground faults, and the underlying reason is still pretty much a mystery although we've got plenty of theories touching on bronze bushings and fluid chemistries. But series-wound and using a higher supply voltage reduces the current needed for a given power quite a bit, which is likely the main reason why none of the gen II motors have had such a problem [to my knowledge]. So I suspect you're only likely to see gen I units through your shop, unless you get someone who ran a gen II *completely* dry and lost all cooling capability. I think the thermal sensors would do their job and have the ECU back way off before damage was done, though. . Very interesting that you've tackled such a project, though. Have you read the transaxle rebuild page at Art's Automotive? Presumably you'd have to do all the same shim-fitting and other machine-shop type steps. And the research papers from when our own taxpayer-funded think tanks ripped Priuses down to the stator laminations and beyond are rather interesting, including the comments on how *dense* they found the slot packing to be. Sorry if all this is obvious and already known to you; just trying to help expand your reading list... . _H*
