Reconditioning & balancing is NOT a fix for a failed battery pack. It can extend the useful life of an older pack though. Replacing failed modules & then properly reconditioning & rebalancing can extend the life. Hybrid Automotive's Prolong system helps automate this. Companies selling used "refurbished" battery packs very rarely spend the time needed to properly recondition & balance. In fact, many times, they mix different generations of modules in the same pack.
It's more like a maintenance procedure than a fix; just like changing your oil doesn't fix anything but does promote longer engine life.
The one thing you can see though is better performance through reconditioning . Compare it to a newer battery and see what you think.
I got really good results with one super mild discharge event. Going on a year + since then and the battery has been 100% better. When it starts to decline then i will do a full discharge event. But its till a big ole ticking time bomb back there. If and when i buy a new battery I will then sell my prolong charger so its a pretty good investment. I will keep my G2 till it blows up because my wife loves the little car. Great in town. Zippy easy to drive great ac it can haul all kinds of crap really really reliable the car hasn't done anything stupid since i bought it new 11 years ago. All you have to do is keep the oil at the full line and keep good quality coolant in both loops keep a good water pump belt on it and check the engine coolant at the rad inlet not the overflow. Overflow is meaningless. . Clean the front ac condenser and the under dash e-coil. basic car stuff. I rarely drive it because its so uncomfortable.
Hi - I'm going to piggy back on this and hopefully not 'hijack' as some say. I have only had one anecdotal experience recently after buying a 'buyer beware' car with HV Hybrid battery error code already in place - when I bought. I thought, hey I feel I'm getting a 'decent' deal on this car (in Boston) and hopefully I can handle the Hybrid battery item. Well, I went with a shop in Brooklyn that was selling for $600 a refurbished/reconditioned battery and installation. Core charge and all that. So, they have a 1 year warranty. I will say- they meant well - and wanted everything to work. The guy drove a couple hours to do the first swap in. So, I live in Iowa and I'm making my way back and all the way over in the Pittsburgh area when the error code goes again It was pretty bad, too - some codes the car drives normal but this was a pretty regular high RPM engine revving kind of event. The guy agreed to meet me in the middle and installed another reconditioned battery in northern Maryland. I made it all the way to Indianapolis, IN this time before the error code came up! In fairness the car has been driving more or less normal but I am aware of the risks to the engine in driving with the battery module in error mode. I'm not sure what causes that (and would love to hear from someone that can explain why the increased risk/stress on the engine, especially during highway driving)… Anyways, that informs my opinion of reconditioning etc. Would I do it over? Probably not. But I was on the east coast and didn't have great options. I'm an EE background so I don't mind taking this stuff apart. Since then (I'm back in Iowa) I have done just that and am looking forward to learning more. I've taken apart the batteries and interestingly I am measuring a pretty regular 7.35-7.42VDC on a per cell module basis, and then what I'm assuming are the 'bad cells' usually are between 5.5-6.4V and obviously that's a noticeable difference. There's also a few cells interspersed that are just ever so slightly off from the higher ones... I'm going to be working on these. I understand the forums and Toyota cannot support people working on this stuff. I firmly believe though that there is an unmet and important market need for these hybrid batteries. That kind of draws a line in the sand as far as where I stand on the 'right to repair' issue. I do have the right to repair, and I have the right to make purchasing decisions and take on risk thereof. OK, so moving on... One interesting observation was that the shop doing the swap in was interested in a field test to gauge the quality of an existing battery module by simply measuring the total voltage of the pack. I guess the thinking was that this allows them to make certain conclusions about the voltage of individual cells, likelihood of many/multiple cell failures, etc. What I'm very unsure of is if any of these shops are taking a quantitative approach to establishing battery capacity (measured in energy delivered) in addition to looking at voltage. I would guess the majority of suppliers and reconditioners are somewhat 'unsophisticated' in that they are simply looking at voltage... This is not enough. A battery's ability to store energy and deliver it under load needs to be established and tested. The other major question I have IS related to voltage. I'm wondering if a simple switched mode power supply regulated DC power supply would be what I'd want to use to charge these individual cells to capacity? I would think yes, but I don't want to just crank the voltage to 7.6V etc and damage the cell in an effort to charge/boost the voltage, etc.
There is a difference between changing a cell or two and Remanufacturing a hybrid battery. We test every cell before and after the reconditioning process. We use state of the art computer system to record the discharge and charge rate over time to make the best and most reliable Hybrid packs available. We offer a 3 yr 36,000 mile warranty on our Remanufactured hybrid batteries. Williamson's Repair & Tire Inc 1420 2nd str ne Bondurant Ia 50035 515 967-0900
