Cleaning Bus Bars and Nuts

I ordered 5 sets of polished copper bus bars from acenbay for Prius 20, 30 and I hope that no one touched them with bare fingers.
I need 2 sets for prius c (18 bus bars and 20 nuts) but they don’t have such a set. I'll have to take them from the sets I bought.
I'll install one set on a 2015 primearth battery (oem replacement from Toyota) on the prius that I'm currently driving and see how they perform.

Be careful what you try because this might happen. Based on what I saw, it looks like the sensor harness connector has oxidized at the battery computer and someone installed a new harness (sold with bus bars by Toyota) without cleaning anything.
If I were you, I would remove the bus bars after a month to make sure that bare copper is visible on the battery side of the bus bars.

Look not bad from this outside.


However, the inside looks terrible



and this is the catastrophic result. The similar thing happens when you clean bus bars with the muriatic acid.

 

These are painted a few years ago OEM nuts that I have removed many times already.

 

Copper begins to darken and oxidize where it is touched.

 

I received my 5 sets from Acenbay. Each set contains 27 busbars. Two sets of bus bars are enough for 3 Prius C batteries.
The busbars appear clean with no signs of fingerprints.
Acenbay bus bar is thicker than anything used by Toyota.
No matter how long they last, I believe that new ones are much better than any used ones that have been cleaned.

 

I have to say; i checked the resistance where the 8mm nuts are tightened against the bus bars and got zero. The metal was clean when I pulled off a nut. I don't think cleaning all that stuff makes any difference. I could be wrong but I think the problems lie elsewhere.

 

Just want to present a fun fact regarding these bus bars. I performed a load test on these bus bars and compared them to the OEM bus bars. The test consisted of subjecting each type of bus bar under a 60A load for 5 min as well as 10 min duration. In both cases, the temperature rise on these bus bars was on average 19% less compared to the OEM. They do in fact stay cooler because they transmit the current more efficiently than the OEM. This is directly proportional to the reduced internal resistance. According to the hand calculations, the internal resistance is approximately 20% less, which validates the correlation to the physical test under load. Nickel-plated bus bar test results were very similar as well.

 

Lets hope you used my promo code "azusa" at AcenBay.com to save some cash!!!

 

So...the 5 minute test was 4 minutes and 53 seconds longer than the typical high current period experienced by the battery under full acceleration with the pedal on the floor. What were the actual temperatures? what was the actual difference?

Based on your results, Az is probably getting 10 more mpg and he can feel the added acceleration it provides, but what would the rest of us actually see?

 

How much of a discount?

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

10% discount

 

Generally that's something the consumer has to stay on top of these group buys and all this and that kind of stuff your friend got us set up with this well yeah well when you ring me up I'm going to be the first one asking about $1.20 so there's always that lots of people don't know how to operate the cash register or the calculator they only know how to tell you it's $1,000.

 

I decided to test at 5-minute and 10-minute durations to reduce the noise in the reading of the data. In reality, the current is flowing back and forth at different rates and eventually, the heat builds up depending on the driving style, terrain, and road conditions. My focus was not so much on the peak temperature I could achieve, but mainly on how much it rises compared to the OEM under the same load conditions. I also found it very interesting that delta T was lagging similarly at the 5-minute mark and 10-minute mark, even though the actual temperature was higher the longer it was under load. The ambient temperature at the beginning of the test was 75F and the final temperature was 105F for the polished copper and 112F for the OEM bus bar. At the 10 min mark, the temperature on the polished bus bar was 115F and on the OEM it was 126F (I was getting values between 15% and 23% difference in delta T on different tests).
The temperature itself is not the point, but what the test clearly demonstrated in my opinion is that the OEM is consistently getting hotter by approx 20% after prolonged use. You are correct that in reality, the bus bar will not experience such continuous load, but hundreds of various intensity charge/discharge cycles will still cause the heat to build up eventually. Regarding the MPG, I don't think this will have a direct impact on the MPG, I think the greater benefit, in the long run, would be the health of the modules and not the immediate MPG improvement.