Reconditioning Experience with Hybrid Automotive's Prolong System

Today I finished the Prolong 3-month "charge only" session. 19 hours and finished at 240v.

Also, I originally posted the below item in an old thread about 12v chargers in the Gen III area. I figured I'd put it here also since it really does belong here. What I bought is not his preferred CTEK but I still want to publicly thank Mendel Leisk for his insight and advice.

 

i just disconnect 12v battery while conditioning...open all the doors.
Prius system keeps 12v battery at perfect level after reconnect and drive.

 

I needed a 12v charger anyway. With my wife and I both retired now, either car, the 2008 Prius or the 2007 Yaris, can easily wind up sitting in the garage for three or four days at a time. Other days hers only gets used for maybe up to 5 miles. Not enough to keep the 12v in good health. I can use this charger/maintainer on whichever car is sitting. Getting rid of a car is not an option with one daughter in the process of getting her driver's license. She'll need a car to get to the local college.

I must be psychic. I see a white 2007 Toyota Yaris in her future.

 

I'm fortunate to have a garage, and whenever the car is garaged (every night, lately) the AuxBattery maintainer is plugged in and switched on. Whenever a Prolong recon. is needed, the MajikExtenshunKord¹ (see threads passim) is used so that all the Prolong Equipment is sitting outboard of the car which has all the doors closed, and the winders wound up!

¹ absolutely essential if using the LightBulb Discharger!

 

…oh, by the way, did a couple of long trips this past weekend (each >100mile round trip) and another of 50 miles today, and noticed when I got home, that the SoC was hovering around 77% (highest value I noticed earlier today was 81% ) (aside: " @jeff652 , I think it's working! ")
PS: I did the most recent short recondition about three weeks ago!

 

my fan box is making a noise

I didn't want to leave the charger on long enough to find out if it will still turn the fan on. Is this reparable?

 

You mean that high pitched whine? I could barely hear it. It sounds like it might be the fan in the little fan control box.

 

it was virtually silent when I did the reconditioning. this is new behavior and is very noticeable in person.

 

I'm confused. Why is the Prolong hooked up and the fan running if you already did the reconditioning? And when you're doing the reconditioning, the car's fan should be roaring and running full speed.

I don't know if it's the reason for the noise, but you might want to double check that you have the wires on the right terminals inside that fan controller. The original instructions when Jeff first released it back in 2014 had them backwards. My fan worked, sort of. But it was very unreliable because the polarity was reversed on the SCR or whatever is in there to power the fan. Sometimes the fan ran normally, sometimes not at all, and sometimes flat out and gave me codes. That's how we discovered that the polarity of those wires is a big deal. But, like I said, I don't know if getting them backwards would make it make that noise. However, if you say it was virtually silent when you did the reconditioning, I'd be concerned that it wasn't running properly and therefore not wired properly.

 

I did the reconditioning but now want to do a balance charge as I've just replaced a bad module. the unit was silent but it was able to run my fan. there was no setup of the box itself required. I think water may have gotten into it from my trunk leak prior to sealing.

 

Oh, you're talking about the fan control box that is part of the harness, not the car's HV battery fans that is making a noise.

In that case, this is the typical noise that happens when a cooling fan bearing goes bad. It can sometimes be eliminated by a few taps to the fan box, but usually this only works at first but then the sound becomes permanent. Yes, it is repairable. If you talk to Jeff at HA (or more correctly the help-desk) you will either get a new fan sent to you if you can DIY or the other option is to remove the harness and return it to HA for repair.

Unfortunately, I think this is more common than you would think as I think the part is a cheap one. It has happened to my harness and when I emailed Jeff about it he said it was not a great concern for me due to our mild climate. He said the electronics would work fine, in my case, even without the fan. He said it was only in the box to make it more robust for operating in hotter climates. YMMV, and I would recommend you talk to HA and find out if the position has changed from when I talked to quite a while ago.

So, just to close out this thread, do your car's HV battery cooling fans come on when you are charging the car?

 

it did before this bearing failure. I'll give it a balance charge soon and see if it still does. in the meantime I've taken the harness out of the circuit.

 

What do you mean by that?

How will you charge the battery with harness removed?

 

just mean that I hooked it back up the way it was so the fan definitely will run while I'm driving. harness is still in and I'll connect the fan control box and watch it while charging to see what happens.

 

Ah, ok. Keep us posted.

 

FWIW, I've observed noise coming from both the control box, and the main battery-cooling fan, loud enough to be heard when listened to closely and with no other background noise (eg. radio, traffic, etc.). When I did the most recent full recondition back at the end of June 2017 (temp in the 80s), at the start, the fan(s) came on immediately at full speed and were quite noticeable, but when I did a similar recondition at the end of December 2017, the garage was very much cooler (11F), and the fans were so quiet, as to be almost silent, however I noticed they sped up as the charge progressed, it almost sounded like they were changing gear!

 

That might be a good precaution. However, I think it would pay to ask @jeff652 about it. I'm sure he'll do his best for you.

 

Unfortunately, there are not too many off the shelf 25mm fans available. The ones we use can be noisy. Sorry, I am still searching for a better vendor with quieter fans. It will not harm the operation of the system. The fan is only needed in the hottest climates. If you are not in Arizona in the summer, the fan in the harness box can be non-functional and the system will still be very safe. If it stops working let us know and we can send a replacement.

 

good to hear thanks jeff

 

More likely the ECU reset assumed a default value until they could recalibrate. I wouldn't expect that your IR could go from 0.025 to 0.019 Ω.