Please Help! HV battery needs to be replaced!

welcome to priuschat! tough call, that's a lot of mileage. if you can find a place to install a rebuilt at a reasonable price, you will then have a car that is going to have 2-300,000 miles in a few years. or do you drop 24k on a new one, and in 3 years, you're in the same place. all the best!

 

that's a great deal! please keep us posted.

 

I would avoid the generic 'rebuilt' battery, and instead buy a lightly used and recently parted out 3G battery off eBay and let the local installer swap the modules into your 2G case.

That will cost $1500 - $2000 but likely last 10 years.

Look at this Ebay ad: The guy rebuilds Prius batteries and gives a 6 month warranty if the modules are 2G, but 24 months if he swaps in 3G modules. That says a lot.

 

I found a guy on craigslist that replace my bad HV battery with a rebuilt one for around $600. I watched how he did it and it was amazingly simple (if you are comfortable with taking out panels, etc..). All it takes is a screwdriver, and a socket set.

In any case, unfortunately, my rebuilt battery only lasted about 6 months. From what I understand, they give you a previously reconditioned battery from someone else, and take yours out, replace the bad cells and recondition it, and sell it to someone else. However, the other cells are probably near it's life expectancy, so you're sort of gambling with it.

After my reconditioned battery went dead, I decided to buy a battery from a wrecked prius. I did the install myself, and been running great for around 9 months. My prius has over 250k miles on it right now... the only reoccurring problem I've had is with the inverter pump (or whatever it is), that makes a 10 second noise AFTER you turn off the car. I replaced that awhile back, but seems the noise is getting louder now, and I may need to do it again.

Oh, and the other issue is I'm throwing a P420 code due to cat converter. I'm in california so it's over $1k to put in a new cat...good thing our prius doesn't need to be smogged, so I just ignore it. I know that theoretically, my fuel efficiency suffers, but I'm still getting +40mpg average, so I'll live with it.

If someone really wants instructions on replacing the HV battery, I can probably spend a weekend to video the main parts of it.

 

The noise is hot coolant being pumped into the thermos storage tank. Mine is a little loud but at least I know that it's working.

 

I know you are not in a CARB state where Toyota would extend the warranty to 150k miles. However it wouldn't hurt if you contacted your local dealership service manager or Toyota HQ to ask for assistance in replacing the battery. Seems lately everyone that has tried asking for help got 50-100% coverage on the battery, paying only labor to the dealer to install. You want to ask for a "Goodwill Warranty" to cover the battery.

 

Hi farst -

Could you send me the info for the guy you used? How did it work out? I also live in Dallas. Thanks!

 

Replaces batteries in Dallas, SA, Austin, Houston. Will come out to where vehicle is at, Google PriusBatteryrepairofHouston

 

Send a PM to Houston Hybrids and see what she says.
Houston Hybrids | PriusChat

 

Thanks!

I tried contacting them through their website by phone and by email. The phone voicemail was full and unable to receive messages. No response to my email yet. Seems fishy. Any experience with them? I'll send the PM though!