Fur and dirt causing major battery problems

Thanks rondodog for the tips and pics.

So maybe it was only the fur and dirt that brought you bad mileage, and not the hills as you had posted on another thread?

 

700 dollars? just to clean out your fan?

and bring on the install pics please

 

If we had an MFD temperature indication for the batteries something like this would be a lot easier to diagnose...if we know the battery is getting hot then finding the cause becomes a lot simpler.


rondodog,

Thanks for sharing the info and your solution.

What exactly did the dealer do to justify $700? That's at least 10 hours of labor even at stealership rates.

 

It seems outrageous to me that they would soak you for so many hours if they were getting codes from the battery pack, particularly the one for fan malfunction. The first $150 and $120 seem like triple charging since they are the same thing (double charge) and they also charged for the battery test and cleanout, amounting to a triple charge. This is pure profit for them.

How many hours did the guy actually work on the car?

 

WOW talk about expensive, but at least it seems you found a good Prius Tech, but did you try to negioate a better price?

 

A filter on the battery vent looks like a good idea, though it shouldn't impede the airflow much. Short of shaving the dogs, I'd recommend checking the air cabin filter at least once a week. I'm pretty sure I don't want to see pictures, but you might check if it's time for a new bag in the vacuum.

 

My guess is that the labor rate is $120/hour so you were charged for six hours of time. Considering that the tech had to open up the battery case and deal with all that dirt and fur in the fan, it doesn't seem so bad.

The good news is that your problem (which was pretty unique) was accurately diagnosed and repaired. Good idea to install the filter, hope that you are planning to check it frequently.

 

just for clarification, flat rate doesn't equate the the actual amount of time spent on the car. $70/hour labor rates are a thing of the distant past even on the east coast.

props to the tech for figuring it out, might be worth sticking with him in the future too if it's feasible for you. repeat business is always appreciated, and i assure you he will remember you

 

Perhaps this situation is unique, but as Rondodog has posted the DIY photos, we can hope that there will be some filter inspections done on the various pet-hauling Prius of PC. It would be a good thing.

Shawn: I agree completely, and furthermore that every Prius would be better if we knew when the max HV battery temp. reched 45 oC

 

I'm thinking with 2 Border Collies, you are going to want to check that filter once in the spring and once in the fall just after the seasonal shedding times.

 

I've never been charged anywhere close to that on an hourly basis. At that rate they better be whizzin' gold and crapping diamonds as they are charging out at $240,000/yr per tech (never mind the markup on parts & "shop supplies.")

Cleaning up a little dirt and fur? What's such a big deal about that? Now if it was full of wet manure, I could see where it might not be a job for the squeamish. But either way it is a straightforward low skilled clean up task of the $6/hour variety, not 20 times that.

If someone asks you whether you want to clean out the dirt and fur or have them do it, at what price would you say, "you do it?" I figure it at maybe half an hour at $40/hour, or $20 total. Any more than that and I'll do it myself, thanks. When I go to a dealer I'm paying for expertise, lifts, and some tools I don't have, not to keep my hands clean. I won't be grateful to someone for charging me several hundred dollars to pick some dog hair out of a squirrel cage blower (any more than if it was full of leaves & insects or rodent infestation.) I've replaced, cleaned, reworked, swapped bearings, motors, etc. on similar blowers before on personal cars and HVAC, it is no big deal. It's pretty low tech at that point.

I'm all for giving folks an honest profit, but not being charged outrageous sums for trivial aspects of the work. Seems there is a growing disconnect between real value and perceived value.

 

Hi Shawn,

The cost-of-living in Silicon Valley is quite high; a starter single-family home located near Stevens Creek Toyota in San Jose is priced in the high six-digits. (I know the area well as I lived in Sunnyvale for 21 years prior to moving to OC.)

Further, the untrained tech (say the junior guy who is assigned to engine oil changes, and who according to other posters can't even do a Prius oil change without adding one quart too many) would not know how to retrieve the DTC, interpret them, and disassemble/clean the correct assemblies without screwing something up.

 

this is a very interesting thread. ronodog, thanks for the information on this.

never fails to amaze me what i can learn here.

 

well, let's clarify how flat rate works. this is not a flat per-hour-worked system. each job (remove/replace, drain/fill, diagnose/test, etc for parts x, y, and z) carries a certain number of hours as a standard time. it's much like piecework.

say job A carries a rate of 0.5 hours. no matter how long it takes the tech to do the job, whether it's 10 minutes or 2 hours, he gets paid 0.5 hours at his rate of pay per hour. so you see sometimes the tech comes out ahead a little bit, that's considered a good paying job. the ones where you barely break even or get behind, those screw the guy over.

this means you can put in 60 hours at work in a week (standard for dealerships) and get paid for anywhere between 20 and 100 hours.

local rates are $90/hour here.

you're paying for the expertise as well as the tools, supplies, and facilities that you may not have at home. the guy is specially trained in diagnosing the source of the problem and correcting it. if correcting that involves removing some clogged fur, that's that, he does it. ever remove a bloody former-mouse from a heating duct? they're not trained to do that either but it sure happens in the course of business.

 

I grew up on a farm, so there isn't much that makes me squeamish...other than $700+ bills to clean out a blower fan.

Lived in Silicon Valley for a year, but that was long ago...the place is way too overpriced now to even consider living there.

As it is, the OP was still at least triple charged for this. Cleaning a blower fan shouldn't be more than 0.5 hours. Most of the rest was multiple billing of the same troubleshooting along with whatever the charge was for the actual assembly/ disassembly.

When you see the battery pack fan malfunction that screams, "CHECK THE FAN FIRST!" If I'm paying for expertise I expect the expert to be smart enough to go after the low hanging fruit first, rather than soaking me for a bunch of dead ends. Dead ends are on the dealer's dime, NOT MINE!

 

the tech did check the fan first: he ran an active test once he had the codes. then he started dismantling the battery cooling system (though i doubt removal of battery itself was necessary, unless just to be thorough) and found all the dog hair. and cleaned it out. where's the dead end? the guy did a fine job.

the OP wasn't paying for dead ends. he was paying an entry fee to walk into the dealership with a problem, plus the cost of the job. fwiw, the act of plugging in the scantool bills 0.5 hours alone.

 

Apparently the "entry fee" was about $600 dollars of that.

Plugging in the scantool is part of that up front cost of walking in. That's the problem with stealerships: triple charging you for everything at a labor rate that is several times normal.

I'll be glad when there is some familiarity with handling hybrids so that it will be unnecessary to rely on the stealerships.