Battery Reconditioning Failure

P3000 can be one of 5 different things... And yea... Hybrid Automotive customer service sucks.

If you're lucky those cumulative voltage numbers you're seeing in Dr. Prius app is bad data caused by corrosion in voltage sensor assembly where it connects the hybrid battery ECU.

If you remove the ECU and open it up and you have corrosion on one of the pins, or there's signs of it shorting out, that the kind of P3000 that can be fixed inexpensively by replacing the voltage sensor harness (Wire, Frame, No.2) and in some case if the ECU is fried you can replace that with a used one off Ebay... Both these parts combined cost less than $200.

If this isn't the problem than you have a bad cell in your pack that fails when sending or receiving high amp loads. And because you've already done all the reconditioning once you load test your modules a replacement module from this guy who sell the highest quality modules: https://2ndlifebattery.com/contact-us/ That will keep your pack going for 3 months to 3 years / until the next module goes bad.

 

truth be told, as mentioned above, your problem likely is not a battery module problem....
don't look at it as having wasted $740, look at it as an investment for maintaining your battery after you resolve the current problem

 

I'm curious. Did you ever get a more capable scantool as recommended in order to find out what codes were in the HV battery ecu?

The Prolong system might "maintain" a working HV battery, or balance one that's had modules replaced. It can't really "fix" anything that would cause a P3000 - master warning light.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

There are a lot of problems Prolong simply cannot help all by itself. Many batteries must be mechanically fixed first, and there are many things that can be causing the issue. How well your repair goes depends entirely on your attention to detail and how thorough your work is. Once those issues are resolved, Prolong can go a long way in making your repaired battery last for years and years afterwards, in spite of what many doomsayers say about repaired batteries. Good luck on your job.

 

Just my two cents, but my experiences with the Deluxe Prolong Charger/Discharger set have been stellar. And as for their customer support, I couldn't disagree more with the assessment that they "suck".

My partner tends toward ready fire aim, so I usually don't let him touch the Prolong gear, 'because it does require you to be at least semi-conscious when using it and he has his moments. One unfortunate day, we'll call him "Knucklehead", decided that he couldn't wait, and so he hooked up a battery and of course did not look at the pictures on their website to check himself (part of their attempt to idiot proof their product, but somebody's always building better idiots) even after I specifically admonished him to do so. The result was that he reversed polarity, blew the ceramic fuse, and damaged something else in the unit that wasn't user serviceable.

Contacted Jorge at Hybrid Automotive, who I believe handles all of their customer service intake and, as he has always been, he could not have been more polite and helpful. He emailed me return shipping instructions within minutes, and I had it dropped at the UPS sore later that day. From the time that they received my unit, to the time that it was repaired and shipped back out, was three days. Is this the norm? Can't say, just sharing my anecdotal evidence. Jorge was also emailing me updates as the repair was accomplished and the unit shipped back out, so kudos there as well.

Not a month later I was down with Covid, so Knucklehead found a new way to discombobulate the system, or so he thought. He insisted that the discharger would not progress beyond the second level, and supposedly repeated the process on a different battery with the same result. The system was just a year old, but still under warranty, so I contacted Jorge again. I would add at this juncture that I have probably reached out to Jorge at least a half dozen times with questions about their gear (other chargers & harnesses that we could use with our cool box on a bench where we typically do our regenerations) and I have never waited more than a day for a return call.

This time Jorge suggested that we were experiencing "bounce back", which Knucklehead assured me was not the case, so I pressed further. Jorge then suggested that something in the resistor array may have failed, and that if we were comfortable soldering one in ourselves, he could ship a replacement array much quicker (there was something of a rush on our end) than going through the return shipping process. We agreed and he had the array shipped out that day. Once received and soldered in, again, no joy. So Jorge was contacted again, and an RTA was received by email while I was still on the phone with him. Shipped out the next day and several days later I began receiving emails with video attachments that were forwarded from their tech. The videos showed the testing of each stage and that operation was completely normal. I repeated my partner's experiences (as recounted to me) and asked them to double check and if their same result was seen to just send it back; "no problem" was the reply, and the unit was shipped the next day.

A couple of days later I received the well packed unit, return shipped at their expense (we did have to pay the shipping to them, which seems more than reasonable), and once I connected it and ran through the process myself I observed no malfunctions whatsoever. Moral of the story (at least for me regarding my "partner"), always question anything he diagnoses, and never act on his conclusions until you've verified the results yourself. As for Jorge and the folks at Hybrid Automotive, I only wish my customer service experiences with all of my vendors went so smooth.

I'm not doubting that others may have experienced problems at various times, 'because every business has problems at some time or other, just sharing my experiences as a counterpoint. I can think of any number of suppliers who fail more often than not on the service and support front, and one most recent comes immediately to mind.

Not to digress too far, but I had ordered a bunch of Gen 2 Prius negative battery cables from Rock Auto. The cables received were generic Chinese junk identical to those on a peg at my local Walmart, which is to say that the terminal clamp end was for a more standard size battery terminal, not the undersized type found on OEM Toyota Gen 2 Prius 12 volt batteries. Since I have no use for them, I attempted to initiate a return, and Amazon they are not.

Firstly, they have no humans that you can speak to, no matter how bad they have screwed up. I tried calling their headquarters as an end around, but still ended up being routed back to their ridiculously insulting AI system. I tried using their email & chat crap, but after hours and days of frustrating back and forth with their AI, their solution was to determine that it wasn't my fault that they had shipped the wrong product (they did and still do list the wrong product on their site). They also very magnanimously determined that they hadn't done anything wrong either? Their so-called "solution" was to split the difference??? They very graciously offered that I could pay to ship the junk back, and once they received it (but only if in the original packaging and packing) they might extend a credit that I could use for my next purchase. How awesome is that? They advertise and ship the wrong s@#$, keep the product, and pass along their loss to me while forcing me to buy again or get nothing at all, and I'll STILL be out the cost of shipping!? Yeah, right. It'll be a frosty day in Hades before I so much as order a cotter pin from them ever again.

All of that said, my Prolong gear has performed flawlessly (outside of our best attempts to screw it up). I have a growing fleet of Toyota hybrids that I now maintain, both for family, friends and a growing number of new hybrid friends who are tired of "the dealer experience". I charge very modestly for my battery servicing (relative to the norm in our market) and due to ever increasing demand, I'm now looking to add dedicated Camry & Gen 3 gear. The equipment more than paid for itself in its first year, and based on the excellent assistance that I continue to receive from Hybrid Automotive, and Jorge in particular, I will continue purchasing and recommending their products.

FWIW, I pay full retail for whatever gear I buy from them and am not being rewarded in any way for my comments. My only negative is that they won't sell their harness couplings alone, but I guess they need to protect their revenue streams. Maybe one day I'll spend some time rooting online to find a match.

 

In spite of my previous epic tome post, I somehow managed to omit the most important point that you address. Re-balancing failed modules is a quick walk down a short pier. I'm not well enough versed to quote their site verbatim, but they definitely make a clear impression that their gear does not fix what is broken. I've "rebuilt" dozens of Prius 2 hybrid packs now, and I use a very capable bi-directional scanner, as well as Dr. Prius and several other apps, to assist in my diagnostics. I also have other gear for load testing and working on individual modules. Even with all of that I've still run into a couple of packs that just didn't seem to want to cooperate, but eventually I manged to noodle through.

As a result, I now clean and polish original copper bussbars to provide the lowest resistance possible. It's an idiotic amount of effort, compared to just buying a new set of the plated stuff online, but I'm cheap and OCD like that. I also use a variety of methods to clean all of the fiddly bits while also getting De-oxit into the exposed harness ends. It's been well covered elsewhere on Prius Chat, but for those who don't like to search or read much I figured it's worthy mentioning.

I recently purchased a 300k mile Gen 2 that the seller had reached his breaking point with. His dealer had replaced his hybrid pack with an OEM unit, as well as a new 12 volt, for more than the guy had paid for the car. Two weeks later, his ABS pump failed, so back to the dealer, but once they gave him the estimate the car went up for sale. Once I tested everything out for him, to verify the dealer's work, and explained the reality of value and cost to any subsequent buyer, I was able to close the deal for a veritable song. The seller was honestly shell shocked by his experience, but then turned right around and bought a very used Leaf? Ya just can't save some people from themselves.

Anywho, the hybrid pack was about 4 months old, and the closest thing to new that I've ever seen (having spent all of my time re-working batteries that most had already been cracked and worked on by others before me) and it was eye opening. The bussbars were all highly polished, and it's been great having a reference battery that I can drop in to eliminate that as a probable cause when diagnosing.

 

Full retail? We build Prolong style for less than $100, as well as harnesses.
Build Hybrid Battery Maintenance Gear For Under $100 | PriusChat

Not sure what you mean, won't sell harness couplings alone.
Prolong Battery Systems Car Harness – Discharge Ready - Hybrid Automotive

 

A new set of cells works every time and you are not even thinking about it for 8-10 years. Just like the original owner.

Doubt it caused a bigger problem but clearly 1/3 to 1/2 of the cost of new cells

Take this to the bank. If you love messing with the hv battery I would bet you will be in there every 3-6 months on average. Occasionally much sooner, maybe weeks. Reliability and mpg is down the drain replaced by dread and fear about the next failure in a very old battery.

One valid quote from this guy. Often flippers love to temporarily fix cars.

Any success three or four times a year is from this and replacement modules.

What gets missed is batteries are chemical reactions that have a defined number of cycles. Any life beyond five years can and should be attributed to Toyota's conservative charge and discharge algorithms.

 

Doh!
Ain't I the dope. Never even occurred to me to search PC for a hack. Lesson learned.
Only about three pages in and I'm lovin' it. Thx!

When I first went looking for a charger/discharger I was disappointed that no one seemed to have come up with an affordable solution that provided variable voltage so that one unit could handle a wider variety of batteries.

My Prolong coupling plaint was that the orange (black on some) four-pin male twist-lock connector on the harness end that connects to the Prolong units is not made available by them all by itself, ya have to buy their complete harness (no bargain at half their asking price). Since I do nearly all of my charging with the pack out of the vehicle and sitting on a cooling bench I've no need for the vehicle cooling fan control portion of the harness. Given its simplicity I figured I'd just make a couple up so I could run the charger and discharger simultaneously, on different batteries, but no amount of cajoling was gonna loose one from Prolong.

I'm not that familiar with the vehicle, or the Prolong unit for it, but the Honda Insight harness looked like it was about what I was looking for, just not for a hundred bucks. I doubted that they would have had a proprietary design configured, so I'm sure there's an off the shelf match out there, I just haven't had the time to really dig for it yet. Alternatively I figured to wait until it was out of warranty and just replace their couplings with something more readily available if I couldn't find a match.

Thanks again for the tip as I was in the market for a Camry system, as well as something for Prius 3's and Highlanders. They pretty much cover just about all of the hybrids in my area (other than newer Prius models). I realize they didn't sell nearly as many Insights as Prius, but I've never seen a single one around here. At the same time, ya can't drive ten minutes in any direction and not encounter a Prius.

 

Log the module voltages during a full throttle acceleration, from a dead stop. A good battery will deliver appx 150 amps. Any weak modules will show up immediately.

My own test revealed module #27 to be the weakest. Repeated cycling of just that module did not change its performance. It was replaced.