gen1 checking hv battery and torque pro questions

but it doesn't. . .

Torque Pro is a nice app, but not enough to check the various cells in the HV. Requires more software than that app offers. Read up on a miniVCI cable and loading a chinese pirated clone of Techstream on a laptop. Lots of info on this forum, just do a search.

 

If I remember right, the PID info for Gen 1 battery stats did get successfully reverse engineered and can be seen here. If Torque doesn't have those definitions already, it should have a way to import them. The XML format at the link should be easy to transform into whatever form Torque likes, maybe with a few lines of XSLT; that was kind of the idea. It's likely that someone's already done it.

 

there's a danger from sparks/flying molten metal resulting from accidentally shorting out adjacent modules by dropping a metal tool or other conductive things across the battery crossbars

 

About this time last year, I used an old Android phone (Android 4, I think), Torque Pro 1.8.202, a generic Chinese OBDII-to-Bluetooth adapter, and a PID file for Torque from here on the forums. I could see the voltages of every pair of cells with it. I'm pretty sure newer versions of Android and Torque Pro should both work, as long as Torque Pro still understands the PID file format.

1. Get the PID file from here Scangauge or Torque App? | Page 5 | PriusChat
2. Edit the PID file with a text editor (Notepad or equal) as described here Scangauge or Torque App? | Page 7 | PriusChat .
3. Load the edited PID file into your phone or tablet. If I remember right, you either put it in a certain specific directory and Torque Pro finds it automatically, or you tell Torque Pro "import PID file" and then tell it where the file is.

Torque Pro won't show you everything that the Mini-VCI and Techstream can, but the price is right, and sometimes it's enough information to be helpful.

By "power split switch", I assume you mean the service plug - the thing with the orange hoop handle that you can see on the back of the battery, on the left (driver's) side, after you pull back the trunk lining. Yes, you do need to take that out - flip the handle down and pull straight back on it.

You have to decide for yourself if you're comfortable with doing this. In my opinion, Toyota has made it difficult to shock yourself when working on this battery, but not impossible.

If you want gloves, the righteous stuff is probably either a Class 00 or Class 0 rubber insulating glove. Higher classes (1, 2, 3...) will also work, but are thicker and stiffer. You can get a brand-name pair on Amazon for about $45 to $50. Grainger will sell anybody a pair for about $70, but not all of their stores stock them - you may have to order them and have them shipped to you or to your local store. If you have any kind of business account with Grainger, it should be a little cheaper. A local electrical supply house will also stock them, but the price will be anywhere between the Amazon price and about five times that, depending on if the guy behind the counter thinks you are an electrician or not. As far as I can tell, stores like Home Depot and Lowe's don't stock these gloves.

Here's what I have done before - from memory, so the details may vary. I turn off the ignition and take the key out of the lock. I unlock all the doors. I disconnect the 12 volt battery negative cable inside the trunk, and stow the loose end of the cable so it can't accidentally make contact again - like, tie it off to something with a zip-tie, or put a sandwich bag over the loose end of the cable - like that. (The radio station presets, trip odometers A and B, and the clock will go away when the 12 volt battery is disconnected.) I flip the handle down on the service plug, pull it out, and put the service plug in my pocket. I take out the trunk lining over the battery, and at both sides of the trunk, towards the front. I take out the rear seat cushion, the plastic "wall" behind it, and the two vertical bars that are behind where the seat cushion was. I take the inlet air duct (passenger side) and outlet air duct (driver's side) off of the top of the battery. The driver's side duct has the blower motor controller on it; if I remember right, the wires to it are long enough that I can just lay the duct in the trunk, behind the battery, without disconnecting anything.

I go around the traction battery and take out the bolts that hold the top half of the battery case to the bottom half. Most of them are on the front and back edges of the battery, near the bottom of the front and back side. A couple of them are on the top of the battery. One of them is a Torx head; the rest are regular hex-head bolts. I don't have to take out all of the bolts I see - some of them bolt the bottom half of the batery case to the car, and those can stay in. I unclip the white plastic vent manifold from the passenger end of the battery - it is not necessary to disconnect the hoses, just pry back the white clip that hooks into the top edge of the battery. There are also sheet-metal brackets on the front of both the driver's and passenger's end of the battery that I have to unbolt.

Near the driver's end of the battery, there are two fat orange cables going under a little sheet-metal cover. That cover has a couple of bolts, plus the round orange head of a peg. The service plug has a tab on its handle that fits into the head of the peg to release the peg. I then undo the bolts and take the cover off. I can leave those two orange cables bolted to the battery, but that little cover has to be off so i can take off the top of the battery.

Once I have all the bolts and fasteners out, I get in the back seat, facing the back of the car. I put my fingers in the big holes on the top of the case where the air ducts were, and lift the top of the battery case straight up until it's clear of the battery. After I lift the case all the way up, I usually pull it towards me, into the back seat, and then take it out one of the doors and set it on the ground next to the car. I keep the top half of the case clean and dry.

On the front side of the battery - the side that's closest to the back seat - parts of an orange insulator along the front edge of the battery modules are visible, and then a black plastic insulator covering most of the orange insulator is easily visible. http://birdbird.org/cars/prius/pics/dscn0426.jpg shows the black plastic insulator - it's the vertical black piece to the left of those orange corrugated tubes. The black insulator unclips from the orange insulator (see the loops of black plastic at the top edge) to expose the front set of battery module terminals. There are actually two black insulators - one for the left side of the battery and one for the right.

If I just take off the black insulators on the front (FRONT) of the battery, I can measure the voltage of every pair of modules, the same way the battery ECU does. My voltmeter probes are insulated on all but the very tip, to make it harder to short anything out with the exposed part of the probes.

If I want to measure the voltage of every single module, I need to remove the black insulators on the back side of the battery (in the trunk) as well. They come off like the front ones do and there are two of them, like the front. In the center is another smaller black insulator for the two wires to the service plug - for that one, I unclip the top edge and fold it down, like turning a wall calendar to the previous month, to expose those two terminals. I usually sit in the trunk, use one hand to hold the voltmeter probe against the stud on the front of one of the battery modules, and reach over the battery with the other voltmeter probe in my other hand to put it against the stud on the back of that same battery module. This is somewhat more risky than just working from the front side of the battery - I'm stretching over the top of the battery, so it's harder to see where both of my hands are.

When I am done inside the battery... reassembly is the reverse of disassembly. I make sure all the black insulators are reinstalled and clipped all the way down correctly. Then, I get the top half of the battery case, bring it back into the car, hold it over the bottom part of the battery, and set it straight down on the battery. After that, it really is the reverse of what I did to take it apart. The second-to-last thing I do is put the service plug back in and flip the handle up, and the last thing I do is reconnect the negative cable of the 12 volt battery.