New Prius owner, old Prius problem

I'm a little worried about the pattern revealed under the battery. This appears to be water spots (all dried now).

 

Looks like it has been worked on. But they did a good job cleaning and putting it back together

 

Found my culprit. Couple cells at 7.4, replacing those as well. Everything else was at 7.7

 

Well, it's not pretty but it runs.

‍♂️‍♂️

 

Btw, **** oh dear all the battery nuts are fiddly as all heck. Took me longer to mess around with those than anything else.

Thank you @PriusCamper. Those modules are strong, 2nd life is awesome. Still have to put the insides back together but I'm going to call it a night.

Thank you everybody on this site, all these discussions and information here helped me a ton. Can't wait to pull it all back apart and put a new battery in.

 

Well, day two. The pack is still functioning, the blocks look a little closer to equalizing. The lie o meter, I mean the mpg estimator says I'm getting 50+ mpg right now. I'll do the actual math next week, but it's usually only over by 1 or 2 mpg, so not bad for sure.

 

Very helpful! Thank you. I'll have to spray the car down and see if I have a water leak. I've driven in the rain several times since I've purchased the vehicle and I didn't see any standing water when I opened it up(although it's been several months since we've had any actual rain).

 

Well, the modules (according to dr Prius) look like they're stabilizing. Obviously they won't be balanced unless I find somebody to do it, but the fuel mileage is actually a tic better than prior to the pack repair.

 

In the continuing saga of this old Prius, we see today's (poorly estimated by the computer) mileage still doing quite well. So far I'm incredibly happy with the results(here's hoping I get 6-9 months out of this repair, I'd be ecstatic). Also, that last 5 minutes of driving is a 350' elevation gain getting off the highway to my office, lol. I have one on both sides of my drive, it's 500' on the home side of the drive though. (Driving through the valley to get to and from work).

I can't say enough about how much this forums resources have helped me. Thank you all so much for the support you've given to a nobody on the internet. Especially thanks to @PriusCamper , pnw to the rescue!

 

Okay, I'm going to make some assumptions here.

#1 the battery pack was already failing when I bought the car
#2 that I filled the gas tank as much as possible (one "top off" attempt, I was incredibly surprised when it shut off, more of a "it can't be full" than a top off, should be full full. When I filled the tank after the repair I did not try to top it off, just fyi and i now know topping off is bad thanks to this forum).
#3 the lie o' meter lies both ways on the prius(it showed 55.8 mpg average prior to filling tank)?

I'm a "it's 1/4 I'm going to fill it" kind of guy (I hate stopping at inconvenient times to fill up). So prior to my pack repair 350 miles was 7 gallons ish(just explaining my early fill up). The gas gauge showed I still had plenty of fuel, but based on my prior driving experience I fueled up same as usual. I was shocked when it first stopped at less than 6 gallons of fuel pumped.

Did I not fill it up full, or is my fuel mileage really 59+ mpg?

(Yes I know the fuel gauge in the picture shows the tank less than full, it hadn't fully registered yet and I was in a hurry to get out of the way at the fuel pump. Busy station even at 04:45)

 

The more I read on here, the more quirks I learn about this old Prius. So because of the gas tank bladder you can't actually do the mpg math reliably, just keep track of it and hope it's fairly close?

 

Also, I've been doing a bit of research on getting a new battery for this old Prius. I'm finding it difficult to wade my way through this site in terms of finding the different options. I've seen several online, yet I only see one thread for an aftermarket battery on this site mentioned. Is there a single thread that has all the traction battery replacement options(maybe user experiences as well)??
@ericbecky @PriusCamper