Gen II Prius Individual Battery Module Replacement

I have decided to through the pack to try to get the open circuit voltages similar at just under 8.20v each. Then fingers crossed it works.

Without this forum there is no way I would have tackled this process and would have been at the mercy of the mobile battery fixer uppers.

So thank you all for being awesome.

 

Let us know how it goes! I'm sure it will work just fine.

 

Hey all how's it going

firstly i would just like to say thanks to this thread and a few members here one in particular that has not been seen for quite a while! the battery i rebuilt for my Daughters car over easter in 2017 is still going strong! along with quite a few others, Kiwi was wrong.

My chargers are getting old and annoying me! I have been wondering if anyone has tried the Toolkitrc M6D chargers?

Cheers

Matt

 

I've just spent the last few months buying up almost every secondhand iCharger DUO 4010 that has turned up on eBay US (I'm in Perth). Each time I bought one I had it sent to Planet Express (a freight forwarder in Oregon) and had them sent with other stuff I bought elsewhere. I've got 8 iCharger DUO 4010s now.

The iCharger DUO 4010 has the highest discharge rate of any charger around - it will discharge these modules at 20A. The other DUOs, the 308 and 406 will discharge at 10A.

 

Hi Phildo, hows it going mate? nice to meet another fellow Aussie on here! ..

Yes i have noticed the 4010s on ebay, way too deer for me though im pretty tight lol

The M6D does 15a regen discharge if powered by a battery so it can dump the energy that it extracts, and i have a couple 100a agm's to run the setup, i plan on discharging at about 13a "if" they work properly they will be an awesome budget solution! some /most modern chargers just don't do NiMH properly

Have hunted out quite a few really good chargers on ebay mysef and have a reasonable collection of old brute Turnigy NiMH/NiCD chargers (from the 90's) that can do 20a internal discharge, but they are only single channel and the size of a shoe box lol (well maybe not quite but you know) great old chargers but getting a bit lazy i have given them a really good workout! some are no longer consistent with each other which makes them a pain, i find myself +-%% to figure out actual numbers, i don't do rebuilds for anyone other than myself and family these days its just too time consuming and annoying for me, its a great skill to have to be able to fix own cars but as for helping out every cabbie around here its just not worth it! they want 10 years warranty, a huge discount, the pack installed at F1 pit lane like speed and a cup of coffee while they wait lol .. their core is always a total loss because they keep driving on the old battery until the car near wont even ready! .. way too hard, lifes to short mate!



BTW Happy Australia Day Auzzie Auzzie Auzzie oi oi oi ... best country in all of the lands lol

 

It wasn't my intention, but it turns out that I've spent the afternoon cleaning up a Camry that wasn't meant to require cleaning (ie I rent cars to Uber drivers and the whole concept of returning the car clean escapes this clowns). Lovely... just bloody lovely...

Yes i have noticed the 4010s on ebay, way too deer for me though im pretty tight lol[/QUOTE]

Yeah, the 4010s are bloody pricey, but I want to start discharging at 20A and looking at the discharge curves with Logview.

Bingo... you've got the stuff required for regenerative discharging (ie brain power). I finally figured out that it was going to be a) too damn hard to manage (ie I cycle half of the modules on a pack at a time, which means 17 modules on a Camry pack), and b) it was getting too complicated and over my head anyway.

So, stuff it... I gave up and started buying 4010s on eBay. Spent about four grand on the lot but I figure they'll last for years and I need to start checking the discharge curves on modules.

Now I get to discharge at 20A without having to have an IQ greater than that of a house brick.

What I make up for in talent I make up for in tools.

Does the M6D show the mAh for each cycle? (ie first discharge, first recharge, second discharge, etc)

If you can ever get your hands on a dead Camry 50 series battery (ie 2012-2017) then grab it immediately. I love 'em. Generally about 3/4 good modules. Sometimes I'll get 28 good modules and voila, a perfect Prius pack (ie all matching cycles, etc). The blower fan on the Camry 50 is piss weak and too small, and the batteries die prematurely on the opposite end of the fan. If you know of someone or a workshop fitting new batteries then do a deal where you can put a bunch of dead modules in the Camry casing and keep the Camry modules.

Now I gotta go try and figure out why a Camry hybrid is losing coolant (I'm hoping it's just the radiator cap). Being Australia Day night drivers will be out late and I kinda don't want that Camry to kill the engine tonight.

You betcha!

 

I have cleaned my share of dirty cabs, generally i just drag all the interior carpet and seatbelts out of the car, lay everything out and scrub with hot soapy water and a broom and hit it with high pressure wash!.. maybe ad some degreaser to stubborn spots where required lol

yeah pretty sure i have everything needed to take advantage of the regen discharge i may need a custom 12v charger for the agm's to keep them about 50% soc so the chargers have room to dump the energy without over charging the agm's, it will be a learning curve anyway... the M6D chargers might be rubbish like i said earlier it seems most modern hobby chargers are made mostly with lipos in mind and have naggy issues when it comes to NiMH like poor delta peak detection etc.. time will tell i am going to buy a couple for a test this week and if i like them i will set up 7 or maybe 8 so i have 14 - 16 channels

Don't worry my old brains not great either! i am only good at some things this just happens to be one of them!

Not sure if the M6D's will report capacity for each cycle or only the last, not a big problem for me i am happy to rest between each cycle and manually enter the data to a spreadsheet, as i do now

I see the 4010's get about 500au man o man .. 4k .. i guess you only need to sell a couple packs to get the $ back

have a good collection of 50 series packs in my piles mate, they can be quite okay and mostly as you describe, always WAYYY better than 40 series packs which are a waste of garage space lol,, however i have come across a couple 50 series packs that were not much better than 40 series, some drivers just keep driving and resetting the p0a80 until the car will no longer Ready..

Sorry to hear about the coolant loss mate, my 40 series was doing the same all it needed was a $40 water pump

My gen 3 prius just threw a P0401 yesterday so i parked it up and currently getting ready to do an egr clean while bracing myself for possible upcoming head gasket replacement, i can not live without my gen3 of all the Prius and camrys that i have owned so far the gen3 prius is without doubt the most comfortable vehicle to use for me, i really like the whole layout and absolutely can not live without this little car! i still have a camry but hate driving it

Cheers

matt

 

Quote:
"but I want to start... looking at the discharge curves with Logview."

This is great. Will you match the modules based on the discharge curves? I realized when I rebuilt a pack recently that the discharge curves were the missing ingredient. I did capacity tests and internal resistance tests, and built the pack based on those values, but realized as I was going along that those are very general measurements. The discharge curve is much more specific to each module throughout it's charge state and I think would be key to getting a pack to last a long time.

I THINK the 4 button chargers have the capability to record discharge curves, but the software to do it and the cable to plug it in would be tough to figure out.

I was reading all the suggestions for matching modules, ie match a high capacity with a lower capacity, high internal resistance with low, vs match similar modules together. I realized that, in my opinion, the "matching" will do very little in the long run. The Prius charges the pack as a whole, but only "sees" pairs of modules. So even if you trick the car initially into thinking the pairs of modules line up ok, the car isn't charging the pack module by module, so a mismatched pack is still going to pull itself apart regardless of what the battery ecm thinks. The way to actually create a pack that lasts is by matching all the discharge curves in the pack, so that in any given instance, the modules are maintaining the same voltage. The higher the discharge of the test, the more applicable it would be to real life situations I'd imagine. I think my charger will only do like 7a discharge.

Anyways! Sorry for the rant. It's been my theory for a while, but haven't seen it written out anywhere. Would love to hear thoughts.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

also got my attention!

Phildo, may i ask are you building camry packs with the highest capacity modules in middle of the pack or lowest IR

 

is 5 amp safe for charge ??

 

Yes. At least up to 8.4V per module.

 

Am working with my old 2006 hybrid battery pack and this is my setup:

Discharge at 0.6 amps (because this is the higher my discharge can go) to 6 volts then I
charge at 2 amps till around 8.4 volts then 1 amp of less after 8.4 volts, I wish my charger can detect the delta and auto stop but it is a cheap one and I have to monitor the numbers and manually stop it it’s a Imax b6 ac v2.

 

I bought the ev peak cq3 following the member tmr-jwap Is really powerful and can do up to 4 modules at a time, I like your set up it looks is the right one if you want to build the right way the modules

 

Am glad you like my setup it feels good knowing I can help others members here that is all about, thank you for the recommendation!

 

What's the best way to charge & test modules which have been in storage for several years?

I have 8 spare gen-2 Prius modules which I bought on ebay several years ago when I partially rebuilt my 2005 Prius battery pack. At that time I only needed to change out 2 of the 28 original modules in my pack.

My spare modules have been stored indoors. But they haven't been charged or tested. Now I wish to charge & test them in case I need to replace more modules from the battery pack in my car.

Until recently my car was performing perfectly. But due to the COVID19 pandemic I didn't drive the car much during 2020. Then I got one P0A80 error shortly after I resumed driving the car. I've had no more problems after clearing the error. The car acts and "feels" right. Since then I've also been monitoring the module voltages with Torque Pro when I drive the car. They are all matching. So I don't think I have any permanently failed modules at this time.​

Next I want to make sure that my spare modules are actually good.

I'm thinking of giving my spare Prius modules a long slow charge at about 500mA and then testing them at a load current of 5 to 10A. I have a set of white plastic end clamps from a Prius battery pack with long threaded rods so that all the modules I'm charging or testing will be properly clamped to avoid bloating while on the workbench.

If anyone has recommendations or comments please reply!

PS: I'm an electronic design engineer (semi-retired now). I have a workbench full of test gear of all types. I have an IMAX B6 universal charger, but haven't often used it. Most of the rechargeable batteries I've worked with recently are power tool battery packs. I usually charge them with controlled voltage/current from a variable bench power supply and then measure their energy storage capacity with a DC load tester which can handle up to 10A.​

-Greg

 

Gdanner I had a big interest in storage because I had a lot of cores once

what voltage are they at? They really don't like sitting flat for long, it's not good to see them sit under 7.4v for any amount of time

If they are still okay you will need to cycle them multiple times to get back to their full capacity, as many as 10 cycles

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

Interesting question, I will get all the modules to the same starting voltage 6 volts then charge the same amount of milliamperes 3000 and then leave them alone for about minimum 10 days and then discharge them to 6 volts again and see how much of the 3000ma was still in the modules, tip: discharge down to 6 volts and recharge up to 3000ma you don’t need to clamp the modules, if anything between that margin get swollen I will trash because it was garbage in the first place, hope this help if nobody comes with a better idea or suggestions.
Almost forgot the charger discharging settings:
0.5 you mentioned it’s fine am doing it at 0.6ma
Charge at 2ma for those 3000ma.

 

Hello,
I have Charsoon charger, and it have this function:
- manually discharge
- manually charge
- automatic cycle - discharge-charge
- forming.
What is the correct order (for regenerating Prius elements):
1. manually discharge (max 5A)
2. automatic cycle
3. forming
or
1. automatic cycle
2. forming
Thanks!

 

This is my contribution : “Tiny Prius Battery” - an easy way to recondition cells with hobby charger(s) and take it around with you without breaking your back.

I’m on my mobile but will go to my laptop - had anyone ‘indexed’ this thread? I have two issues;

One of the modules in the mini battery in the photo ‘charges up’ really quickly (8.6v), and ‘discharges’ really quickly (6.3v). Basically, one of the cells inside it seems to have extremely low capacity, but not a dead short. I assume it may have briefly ‘reversed’ during its life before it ended up in a dirt cheap ‘frankenbattery’ I got from TradeMe (NZ’s eBay). I’m wondering whether saturating that module at 0.1amp charge may help the weak cell? Or cycling 8.5-6.3-85 volts (to try to ‘expand’ the range). I know it is probably dead, but I’m trying to save all the Gen 2 modules as I have a Gen 1 with 38 Gen2 modules, as well as my Gen2 with original battery. So I need to try and save the spare cells!

Also I have 38x Gen1 modules, in a range of charges from 0volts to 6/7 volts; they self-discharged over a year (car left in garage during 2029). I’m working on the first one now; charging it at 0.1 amps; it was 1.2 volts, now 3.78 volts after 40 minutes. Is there any trick to bringing these back to life (35 of the 38 wear serviceable before the car ended up in the garage during the lockdowns). Thank you for advice - I will start reading from page 1 how

 

from what i gather , trying to bring back a reversed cell in a module isn't going to happen .. once reveresed u cant traverse ...

too bad we cant disassmble the module ( many have) and fix it (results vary greatly) -

many a battery repair have spent many a man hour trying to revive a reversed cell to their utter disdain and disappointment ...