Replaced battery cell, still errors

Hello folks!

some background. 2005 Prius original owner (well it was my moms but she moved in with us and so we use her vehicle for the mpg). Vehicle had a two bad cells, blocks, whatever you call them (two bad single units) about two years ago. Replaced them and all was well until a week ago, red exclamation. One bad block (based on low voltage of 6.1 when all others were 7.8-7.9).

I'm getting the exclamation point today (edit: after replacing another bad cell I diagnosed last week), and beyond that, the car became sluggish, which is a symptom we hadn't yet seen before. We are topping out at 25mph, which was a little scary.

Is it time for an entire rebuild? Was hoping I could get another couple years out of an inexpensive fix. Considering something like green bean battery, but unsure if sinking the money into a vehicle worth around $2k makes a ton of sense.

She has always struggled getting up our driveway if there's any snow at all (steep grade) so I'm leaning towards retiring her.

 

201k

 

I guess I wasn't clear. I did swap the bad module this second time. But it's still showing a bad battery.
We have snow tires. Brand new this year which makes it hurt a bit more lol. Our driveway is STEEP. Haven't measured it but the oil delivery truck won't come
Down it lol.

 

Back when I originally had the issue I bought the software and dongle Toyota uses on amazon (I have since learned they're literally selling pirated software....) but I could only ever get that to install with an old windows xp laptop. That laptop got recycled (wife didn't realize we still used it... doh!) and I couldn't get it working on our more modern units.

I just have a cheapo Bluetooth scanner that I can scan codes with on my iPhone now. It doesn't come up with anything (they never do with these cheap ones from what I've read) but the dash lights up like a Christmas tree.

 

Haha. Well, "afford" is one of those funny words. We could do it, but being completely without a car payment for the last six years has been wonderful.

I could tap into savings and buy the Tacoma I've long wanted, but that just feels like splurging. Though it makes more sense doing that and "paying into savings" per month than getting a loan and paying the bank for the privilege.

we've been talking about getting a truck since we use the van to haul bigger stuff like our yearly pellet stove pellets, and of course to make clearing snow a hell of a lot easier, so we may go that route.

I work from home and my wife works five miles away now, so it's not like the fuel savings would be massive.

 

sadly I live in MA, so pretty far from Seattle. But that's super cool of you to offer!

I no longer have the code reader (well, I do, but I don't have the laptop the software was installed on). Is it absolutely essential I run codes? I basically "diagnosed" the problem by testing voltages and replacing the one that was around 6v.

 

Is there an app on iOS you recommend?

I did hear about the Tacoma frames. Apparently it extends to some tundras too. Most used vehicles I see are already being listed with new frames. Not surprising; New England is brutal.

 

Lol. Well, if it makes you feel better I'm still rocking an iPhone 6s. She's about half a decade old now.

 

So, there is corrosion around the connectors; the orange strip things is what I'm calling the connectors. Some of the bolts themselves were pretty bad too. One of them got rounded out as I tried to disconnect it.

if I'm being honest it looks about how it did when I first did it so I didn't think too much of it. But having watched some more videos by folks who seem to m is what they're doing (actually hybrid mechanics) these parts seem to be completely replaced in most cases.