Charging a 12 volt jump start battery

If a lithium 12-volt can produce more amp hours for the same physical size and weight, booting battery could last very long time.

 

Typically, a "jump starter" is used at a dealership or shop where they have many cars
and may have to jump start the cars because of a dead battery. And used daily.

The "jump pack" is smaller (thus PACK) and is used if you encounter a dead batteryl

As I learned in the army, better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it!

 

i'm glad to hear prius doesn't have anymore 12 volt issues than a gasser, i'll start ignoring the posts

 

If you ignore the hybrid codes when the 12v battery gets weak, you probably wouldn't know it was weak.
Pretty much like a non hybrid car.
I don't think people realize how important the 12v battery is. I know I didn't. And it can only be .1 or .2 volts
that makes the difference.
Prius chat is a good thing!

 

The ones in my Prii have probably been weak more often than nearly anybody's. I didn't replace my last one until ten years, I have lots of weird accessories added on, sometimes their auto shutoffs don't work and the battery gets flat, I jump it so I can start the car, and go about my business.

And oddly enough, every code I've ever read from a Prius meant exactly what the repair manual said it meant.

The posts about "hybrid codes when the 12v battery gets weak" are easy to ignore when they are based on not having read the codes or bothered to check what they meant because the poster was already sold on the premise that they were bogus. That's all of them that I've seen on PriusChat to date.

As soon as a thread goes up where somebody reads the codes, looks up their detection conditions, demonstrates that the car did not have those conditions and therefore calls the codes spurious, that'll be harder to ignore.

I'll keep waiting.

 

how about the 'dead 12v' posts, are those a 12v problem, or should one look elsewhere for a fix?

 

I've never met a 12 volt battery that couldn't become discharged, nor one that couldn't eventually become sulfated/shorted/bad. I've never met a car that worked very well when that happened.

Nothing I've noticed in a dozen years of driving Prii has seemed to bend that universe in any radical way.

 

So @Pluggo, what specs do you recommend for battery maintainer for the Prius 12V battery, or what model? I just had to buy my first new battery since I bought the car (the original battery died due to me minding stay at home orders and not driving for 2 months), and I want to keep the new battery in good shape. Thanks for the info!

 

Your logic is all backwards.

You do NOT prove that each of a sudden batch of codes is invalid by investigating each one individually.......if you are smart.
You first test the 12 V battery and it's connections and if there is a problem there, you fix that FIRST and then see how many come back.

There have been many reports of all or most of the codes going away with a new "power supply".......when the old one was obviously bad.

And yet you seem to advocate chasing each individual trouble code without pay much attention to the battery.
At least that SEEMS to be what you are saying.

 

I was chasing individual codes after I bought my Prius. With no previous hybrid experience I had to learn that lesson. What compounded my confusion, is that the new battery was also producing funky errors. My mind could not wrap around the concept that a new battery could also be low.

All my error codes went away after I took my brand new battery to the auto parts store in had it charged. That was about two weeks of time-wasting.

 

You're right, I don't—because when I'm reading a batch of codes from a malfunctioning car, I'm not driven by a desire to prove they're invalid. I'm driven by a desire to fix the car, and the information they give me helps with doing that.

That's probably where most people's heads are at when they have a car problem: they are mostly not out to push any particular notion about the codes being helpful or not; they're out to solve a problem.

And a person in the middle of solving a problem, by quietly gathering information that helps solve it, doesn't really need to 'push' the notion that the information is helpful. The notion "engineers built and programmed these computers to check various conditions and report various codes and so that's what's happening when they do that" isn't an extraordinary claim. It's at the level of "the doorbell's probably ringing because the button's been pushed." It's kind of a yawn.

Or it would be, if we didn't also have our small but dedicated contingent of PriusChatters pushing the contrary notion that the codes being reported don't mean what they are programmed to mean, that the doorbell isn't ringing because the button's been pushed, and what's more, that this isn't just sometimes, but so routinely that nobody should even bother gathering the information.

Now that is an extraordinary claim, the kind that is best served by extraordinary evidence.

It's understandable that most people just trying to get their cars back on the road are not invested in pushing some claim or gathering evidence for it.

At the same time, since there are some people on the forum who seem really invested in pushing that extraordinary claim, it might be reasonable for one or more of them to go the extra distance and present one or two cases where what they claim happens so routinely has been shown to have happened at all.

I can do that often enough by clearing codes on any car, whether I clear them by replacing the battery or any other means. Some codes meant to report early incipient problems have detection conditions that took a long time to trigger the first time, and will take a long time to trigger again after clearing. Ironically, those are among the details you can learn by looking up the codes. If clearing some codes means you can drive to the appointment you were going to miss otherwise, then you do what you gotta do, but it's not the same as evidence that the codes weren't accurate.

You can find any number of posts on PriusChat where people have reported their trouble codes, and they included some codes that meant "hey, did you know your battery voltage got really low?", and I heartily suggested attention to the battery. At that point it rises to a sound, evidence-based next step.

 

What exactly is your background in Electronics ?
Pretty much none it would appear, based on the EVIDENCE that you are providing in your warped theories.

The basic principal that you MUST first test and eliminate things that would be common to all or a lot of sub-systems.......is not an extraordinary claim. It is just good basic troubleshooting technique.
Computers cannot make accurate reports if they themselves are not running right.

As for evidence, see post #50 right before yours......just for starters.
If that is not good enough for you, do your own searching.

I will not be wasting any more of my time in this useless exchange.

 

Shall I beat my chest counting years doing this thing or that, as you've been known to do in the vicinity of some of your more entertaining howlers?

As far as the internet is concerned, this is both of us:



On the other hand, we do both have track records on PriusChat with helping other posters understand what's happening with their cars, and I suppose people might be comparing those, and reaching their own conclusions.

"Running right", however, is exactly what millions of them do, day in and day out, under a very wide range of supply voltages and conditions, which their onboard regulators are made to tolerate. If the supply voltage does approach their limits, and they log codes that literally say that so that you know, they are, even then, "running right".

The claim that there are any routine circumstances, where you would need a meter to assess the battery condition versus it being flat-out obviously dead, where they are "not running right", is exactly the extraordinary claim for which evidence hasn't been offered.

#50 on its own is another "no info on what the codes were or meant but I'm sure they were bogus." I've done my own searching and that's completely in line with what I find when I do.

Now, if George W has other threads where the "funky errors" were better described, I'm not saying there couldn't be something to talk about there.

 

"Shall I beat my chest counting years doing this thing or that, as you've been known to do in the vicinity of some of your more entertaining howlers?"

You, sir, are a class act...

 

deleted

 

Nobody has said that "invalid" codes are produced.
The ones that are produced are indicating FALSE failures.
As evidenced by the simple fact that they go away when a new battery is installed and don't come back.

 

Well put.

My compliments on your taking the high road, despite much provocation to exit to the low road.

 

CTEK MUS4.3. It is a smart charger with the appropriate charging Amps for the Prius 12 volt battery. It has several charging mode plus a reconditioning mode.