I have a Gen 3 first registered Sept 2009 with 140,000 km (87000 miles ) I have had the car 13 months and love it .I have added a oil catch can and plan to clean the EGR in the next few months. Today I did a battery health check and as what seems to be the norm blocks 6 and 8 show to be the weakest. I was wondering if it is worth the effort to take out the battery and move the cells around , so the outside cells go to the center of the pack and the weakest cells 6 and 8 would be on the outside , the logic being that 6 and 8 would then be on the outside and would not get as hot as in the center and may last longer. Or would it be a waste of time ?
Looks ok to me. Is there a battery warranty in Australia? If not and the diy type, maybe look into grid charging to Prolong your pack . Having the catch can and cleaning the egr circuit will extend the life of the Prius . Good luck and keep us posted .
No Warranty left , Australian warranty is 8 years or 160,000 km. The prolong might be a option if I could find enough Aussies who wanted to share it , It works out to $545 usd with shipping .
C Can you provide a link to the prolong grid charger pls? I want to look at their costs if I'm ordering it to Lagos, Nigeria. So they sell it on amazon too?
There's mention that the average value (of max and min) is important too, when looking for imbalance. I had a look at that: (spreadsheet attached) And what about the column "% TIME @ MIN V", that seems interesting too.
NiMh does not like too much heat. So I do think swapping the inner modules (which gets the most heat stress) with the outer will help prolong your pack. But it won't make the weaker modules any better. It should slow down the stress rate of the weak ones. Since you were planning to take out the whole pack, a grid charger is not really necessary. A simple 7.2v nimh discharger/charger that you can get from any rc hobby shop will do. If you plan to do the discharge/charge cycle, plan in advance because it will take time. If you ever plan to replace a module, I would keep the original ones, in case in the future you plan to replace the entire pack completely. Toyota may want to verify a pack through the serial numbers of each module before issuing a new replacement pack.
Thanks for the confirmation , I just want to get the most life I can out of the battery. for the least amount of $$$
Absolutely not. It's well known the middle of the pack runs hotter and those modules have a harder life and usually fail first.
