Reconditioning Experience with Hybrid Automotive's Prolong System

Not not necessary to remove orange interlock in either charge/discharge. In fact it MUST be installed or the battery wont charge.

 

I will be driving the HiHy about 10 miles to work shortly which should make it pretty warmed up. What is the best way to try to hear the 3 battery cooling fans for my vehicle? I just wanted to make sure I get an idea of how much sound they make in their normal operation - and whether it is even possible to hear them at all when they are running in my vehicle.

I am thinking when I am parked in my office parking lot - I will switch to EV mode - generally the car will itself switch to that mode anyway. Leave the car in "ready" and try to hear the fans. Will the fans be on in that case?

 

Not sure about the Hyhy but in a G2 the fan is always running only at speed #1 when the car is on. I expect the fan or fans to be on in your car with the car READY only at slow speed so you will not hear them.

I cannot hear my fan with the car on with that low of a speed but have done the smoke test and see very good draw with car on. I assume yours is the same.

Try the smoke test on your fan inlet with your car on. I would expect to clearly see some inlet draw. You will not be able to hear the fan with the car on.
The normal fan drive now goes through the control box Matt installed in your car. It basically intercepts the fan input leads.But you said you and mat checked the fans after install.

Maybe someone who has techstream and a Hyhy can chime in but i would expect the fan to always be on with the car on at speed #1.
And I would expect you will clearly be able to hear your fan or fans during a charge cycle with a prolong as fan is turned on full speed for positive air flow as the battery will get warm as it charges.

 

Well... things didn't pan out as planned this morning. I had put the 12 Volt battery on charge for a couple of hours this morning - regular charger, not a trickle charger. This is the charger I got recently (CTEK (56-959) MUS 4.3 TEST&CHARGE 12 Volt Fully Automatic Charger and Tester). Thought that 2 hours will be enough.

But the car didn't start up at all this morning and I didn't have the time to figure out the issue, so took my son's car to work. My son later checked and told me that the 12 Volt battery showed only 3.5 Volts on the multimeter

I asked him to disconnect the terminals and put it on charge. It is up to 5 Volts now. I am planning to get home early and hopefully it will be charged enough by 1 PM to get the vehicle up and running.

One thing after another.....

 

Put the 12 volt charger on the car at the same time you do a Prolong charge.

 

Yea - my bad... even after reading this umpteen times in this thread... i thought my 12 Volts battery will be an exception since it is less than a year old

 

Later today I will try to confirm by the smoke method if the 3 HV Battery cooling fans are working or not with the Prolong charger. They must be working in the normal course of vehicle use - else the battery wouldn't have lasted as long...

Since I stopped my Prolong charge during the 2nd charge cycle (stopped it after 22 hours) - is there any benefit if I put it on Prolong charge again tonight, say at 5 PM through to 6 AM tomorrow morning?

 

To get this straight, mine is a 2009 Gen II Prius (not a HiHy), but I remember just after I started using the HA Prolong Grid Charger system (4 years ago), I needed to use the car and so interrupted one of the long charges, and then continued later. I was worried about how it might effect the overall recondition, but when I spoke with @jeff652 , he was most reassuring that it wouldn't hurt/damage things, however he did point out that I wouldn't get the true benefit of the triple cycle until I let it go to completion.

I've done a number of full reconditions and intermediate "long soaks" over the past four years, and my results have been posted here on PriusChat, so feel free to use search, learn what I did, and what results I achieved. BTW: I would strongly recommend anyone using the HA Prolong System to keep detailed notes which can then be used to plan subsequent reconditions.

hope this helps - Wil

Oh, and BTW the fan noise (at least on my Gen II) is quite obvious, although I did notice that back in June (garage temp high 70s) when I did the twice-yearly complete recondition, the fan was running full bore, whereas the last couple of times (New Year, and a couple of weeks ago (garage temp ~11F) the fan started off very slow, but changed as the process continued. The noise was quite noticeable by just placing an ear next to the rear quarter panel on the passenger side.

 

Take a kleenex tissue and hold it up to the cooling fan grille, even the lowest speed should hold the kleenex in place.

 

Here's another air-flow sensing tip! Moisten your fingers or the back of your hand, and hold fingers/hand near the vent! The skin will be more sensitive to changes in temp when wet (evaporation will cool the skin, making it more obvious!)

 

So far I have not really been able to determine if the HV Battery cooling fans are running during normal operation of the vehicle. Fortunately, after charging the 12 Volts battery the car started up fine and I have been driving it for the past 2 days.

Earlier this evening, I tried connecting my recently purchased Mini VCI Cable to my gen2 HiHy (just in case folks forget the vehicle in question) and I was able to get to the screen of the Hybrid ECU and capture screenshots of the battery voltages. Posting the screenshots below - can someone help me decode what these mean? Does it mean the HV Battery is in decent shape or not?

 

The only thing I see is that block 3 and block 13 differ by more than 0.2 volts.

The internal resistance looks ok.

 

The hybrid battery looks pretty good not a really bad delta none of the cooling fans are on and the 12 volt battery is probably really old very poor sitting voltage.

With car off measure 12 volt battery voltage first thing in the am. With car off turn on headlights high beam and measure 12 volt battery.
Post back here.

 

Thanks guys for your responses. Good to know that the HV battery seems to be in decent shape. I didn't do even 1 balancing charge on it with Hybrid Automotive equipment so far. Will have to do that one of these days.

Regarding the 12 volt battery - I ran it down during the weekend when trying to recondition the HV battery and didn't really charge it fully. Another screen was showing 12.5 for the battery so I am stumped why on this screen it is showing only 12 volts.II think I will put it on the charger tonight - which should take care of the problem. BTW the battery manufacture sticker says 4/17 so it is not even 1 year old. But it is the Walmart brand - not a real good AGM battery.

 

Just so you guys know the configuration of this battery posting a couple of pics. It is in 3 sections - not one section /block as the prius battery.

 

Since the 12 volt battery has been run down once, it will likely be compromised going forward .

When you go about using the Prolong equipment, have all the windows open but keep all the doors closed.

On the Gen3 the air exhaust comes out the back of the car so if you can’t tell air flow on the intake, check the back by the spare tire.

Good luck.

 

On the HyHy we do not know, though. Correct? IT has 3 fans.

 

The exhaust has to go somewhere, and typically in all cars there are flaps at the back underneath the bumper covers.

I could pull the wife’s RX450h back section apart to confirm, but at work now .

 

I am sure she would appreciate you tearing apart her new car-baby!
Be sure to get comfortable in the doghouse.

 

She’s used to my curiosity .