Having an awful experience with a Prolong kit.

The voltage only starts to drop when the charger is no longer charging... Check the pins in the plug where the black soot is to make sure they aren't loose or damaged... I turned my charge off last night and it was at 241v or 8.6 per module then 7 hours later in the morning the pack was at 227v or 8.1v per module... This is an older pack so it self-discharged a bit faster than other packs I've worked on.

 

I must have missed that e-mail. My unit is a few years old, so I presume it could use the update. When you say "updated to the new numbers on their online chart/owner's manual", what online chart do you mean?

Thanks.

 

Well, yea, once you take the load off that's doing the discharge the battery bounces back up to a higher voltage super fast... What's still incredibly confusing to me is that you say "leved off at 354ma" when in my experience the charge rate is constantly changing between .999amps and .000amps so quickly that you can barely see the number it's currently on... It's almost like you're using the charger with no screens working and you're using a separate device to make all the measurements?

As for your customer service experience that's a bummer... I had a friend call once and not get much results as well... Perhaps it's how the approach is done? I've always been very pleased with how generous and helpful they are... Then again, I always try to get in the customer service person's head and find out how their day is going and make an extra effort to keep it positive and that often tends to get them to be more generous.

 

Chris, this is unlikely to be related to the display anomalies you're seeing, but the arcing is a result of putting a DC load onto those pins at the moment of contact. I noticed that with mine. Doing that long term can damage those small connector pins and sockets. As soon as I saw that, I changed the sequence to plugging the charging cable into the charger BEFORE plugging the AC power cable into the charger. AC doesn't arc as much and the voltage is lower to boot. In fact, if I used it enough to be worth it, I'd put a light switch in the charger power cord. (I have one of the old original models.)

 

Interesting! It's been a while since I used mine, but I don't remember seeing that. I'll try to remember to look more closely next time. If it ever cools down under 90F around here, I'd like to give my wife's '07 with '15 battery a refresh.

 

Mine "pops" when I plug the Prius into the Charger. I then plug in the charger to the A/C. Because of the switch on the Charger, I don't think it really matters. The switch cuts off the charger from the A/C line.

High volatility in the amperage at low voltage is normal. I believe it won't settle down until it gets to around 170 volts. I am guessing that it is doing quick shots to charge in order to avoid taxing the battery. Once the battery is up to a certain level, it then can safely charge at a steady rate.

 

I see! My antique Prolong doesn't have a switch.

 

It settles down at 203 volts .

 

My unit goes down to 17v too. Apparently only the Pro model was updated. I asked support about updating the Consumer model, and received the following response:

We don't have any updates available for those units, we did change the parameters in the last discharge level, but we only change them because we notice that is really not needed to take it down that low, the most important cycle is the first one, you could do the first one multiple times and most likely you will have the same results. But we are not taking older units and updating them, I guess we could, we just need to start and RMA process to have the unit be sent back to us, you will have to cover the shipping for that, the turnaround time for this will be around 1-2 weeks.​

Since it is now 134/101/84, I think I'll do 134/84/84 with my older unit.

 

That's about what I got when I asked them, but over the phone always sounds more generous than via email... If I ever get my hands on one of these for a good price the first thing I'll do is send it in to get a new voltage sticker over the old one and get it reflashed for free, as long I pay for shipping.

While I've had enough experience with over discharging freakouts that actually turned out to be no big deal because these batteries are really tough and hard to ruin a module with reverse polarity... I can empathize that from a product liability perspective with modules that are already on the brink of failure, this will indeed push them over the edge when you go too low, so it's a wise move for them.

 

Long thread. My original old school Prolong that came with the light bulb discharger flips out when the battery is very low.

After doing my first discharge down to 80 volts I hooked up my charger. It puts such a load on the charger that the LED which usually reads .337 and the voltage just blanks out. I let it sit and when it gets up to about 150 volts it straighten's itself out and starts showing the display correctly. Its like it cant power handle the battery current when its almost empty and puts a big load on the charger.

So yeah there's some wonkiness going on there.

I read your first post where it was showing .1 volts. makes me think the orange safety switch is not installed all the way or not installed correctly. That's is a very common issue we see alot.

Try re-seating it. Remove it all the way. Push it back in till it seats. Flip the handle up then slide that same handle down till it locks.

 

I'm having a not so nice time with my kit too, but not upsetting me. Sorry lads for digging up this old thread.

The charger doesn't communicate or turn the fan, neither does the charger make any noise except for a faint high pitch noise. It stays on 250v 0.12a (before and after reconnecting the HV service plug). I initially thought the harness was incorrectly installed, and tried to find out if it was.
However when testing the discharger it works as it should, I think. It shows "0.00" on both screens but the fan spurrs into life..

The car still boots up and drives as normal

 

Are you in Dublin, Ireland; Dublin, Ohio; or Dublin, Georgia?

Anyway, you should get in touch with Jeff at Hybrid Automotive. If it's the plug and play harness, it might be something wrong in the adapter to the fan. If not plug and play, it's easy to miss wire it.

 

Ireland, lol. I could assume that makes returning it more of an issue. I threw Jeff a message there earlier.

It's the plug and play orange harness, I ordered two of them as well. I had it installed in the "shop" with the regular 10,000mi servicing (with the instructions link on the HA site). I was at work so I didn't see any of the work done. :/ The absence of the HV fan made me think it was installed wrong too, but I narrowed that out when testing the discharger which did turn on the HV fan, but that discharger showed nothing "0.00" on the displays. At least I know that the fan communicates with that.

Could the positive and negative wires be connected in reverse on the battery terminal - or the "motor side" terminal?

 

This is what you usually see when the charger and the battery are not properly connected. Though that small amount of amps is a bit puzzling. If I were you I'd call the person who installed it and ask them what side of the relays they hooked the charging wires to. I suspect they bolted them to car side of the relays rather than the battery side. Also if your orange Safety plug isn't put in that causes these symptoms as well. More to the point the "shop" failed to do the job you paid them for so I'd take the car back and tell them to either fix it or give you your money back.