Gen II Prius Individual Battery Module Replacement

Iwhat should the

What should the 12 volt battery read when tested?

 

At least 12 volts lol. Really around 13. Check the voltage now with a multimeter and post it

SAMSUNG-SM-N900A ?

 

Better still charge it at home with your own 12 V AGM fully automatic charger.

If it is fully charged it should read 12.9 - 13.2 V. If is anything less, put it on charge overnight and test again in the morning after it has been off the charger for at least 1/2 an hour.

 

What are the codes?

Screen flickering? Check your 12v.

Also reinstall the orange service plug. You may not have seated it properly.

If all else fails and you need to charge the hybrid battery you'll need a high voltage dc charger. Or go back and individually charge each of the 28 modules with a lower voltage dc charger.

 

There are three steps to installing the orange service plug.
1. Push the plug in.
2. Flip the lever up.
3. Push the lever straight down.

It's the third step that trips people up. Pushing the lever down closes a 12 volt circuit that lets the car know the plug is in place. The car will not start without it. You will need to use Techstream to install the skid control computer.

Brad

 

Brad, appreciate your help, you were correct about #3, I had forgotten that step., and my 12v battery had drained to 9.4v.
I charged it to 12.8 and correctly seated the service plug, it fired thought up woohoo
It sounded like crap at first after a few mins it did get better though.
The hybrid battery charged up to about 3 bars and shut off.

So now the large red triangle is gone but the vsc and abs still remain , I did replace the Skid control ecu from under the dash because dealer said it was bad and not communicating and accepting the zero point calibration.
I tried to reset the memory and although it confirms the error have been erased the lights still remain on. Am i doing something wrong?
I would like to erase these error so I can do the zero point calibration

Any help would be appreciated

 

Two packs at once.

 

It's been awhile since I replaced a skid control computer and I do not remember the exact procedure. Did you erase the codes from the orange plug? What codes are still there? There are at least two steps to initialize the skid control ecu. Keep looking around in Techstream.

Brad

 

I'm currently following your instructions to rebuild my 2004 prius with 260K. One of the 28 modules went bad last April and a local mechanic replaced it for $670. Got the triangle of death again last week and don't have the cash to pay another $670....plus from what I read this problem will continue to happen unless you recondition and balance the pack. I have 5 Imax B6 chargers going currently and just had a few questions:
1) What was your final voltage when the modules were fully charged?....the Imax B6 is still charging the cells (at 1.0 A) and the voltage is at 8.64 and climbing very slowly....I have the Delta peak set to DEFAULT. Just concerned that they might be overcharging.
2) You set your discharge rate at .7 mA....Is there any reason why I couldn't set it to 1.2 A which is the highest it will allow.
3) I was reading in another forum that for NiMH cell reconditioning a slow charge of .1C (650 mAh for the prius cells) is best. I noticed you used a 5 amp charge input and just wondering which way I should go.
4) When set to automatic charge input, do these RC Car Chargers lower the current input as it approaches full charge or does it stay at the current you set as the max? Also do they stop charging on their own based on the Delta peak or do I need to set it to shut off when a certain capacity is reached (like 7250 mAH).
I'm a total amateur when it comes to all this stuff so any help would appreciated. Thank you for your valuable time.
-Tedd

 

Hi Tedd how's it going, pretty quiet on PC today! did you discharge all your modules before you started charging? as you may have read here, B6 is not an ideal charger for this job, quite a few less than ideal problems but If you really have to use B6 try bumping charge rate up to 5A with current limit set to 7500mA, default delta peak is 3mV but these chargers always seem to false trigger so consider bumping peak dV up a little, maybe try 5mV. Make sure you have plenty of fans running! You could try setting discharge limit to 1.2A but may find B6 is pretty lazy and does not like going above 800mA (5W) on Prius batteries regardless of what you dial in.

Cheers! good luck with it ...Matt

 

Could you list all the tools you used to remove the battery pack, did you use high voltage electric gloves? I am having trouble to find the right kind online. Thanks

 

haven't seen a sky blue gen2 before.. ridin' with the cool kids, love it

1: DEFINITELY get high voltage gloves at any cost, there's heaps on ebay for around $10.. Your life is priceless don't skip the gloves.

I remember using 1/2" ratchet (could use smaller 3/8" ratchet but 1/4" may not suffice) long extension bar 8mm through to 15mm sockets (maybe not every size between 8 and 15 but I don't remember which ones to exclude) #2 Philips and mid size flat blade screwdrivers, a simple $5 multimeter to check its not live after removing the safety disconnect, a friend to help lift because (swearword) heavy will hurt back if try to lift it alone.

If you don't have any simple tools might be easier to grab one of those bargain shop budget multi tool sets that come with a pile of useless junk like fila gauges mechanical tyre pressure checker and insulation tape that's not even sticky enough to stick to its self providing the kit has metric sockets an extension bar and screwdrivers it should see you out of trouble for removing the battery.

 

Aha, it is just a random pick when I had to repaint the car, it is perfect with a nemo on the dashboard, gonna update my picture.

Thanks for your answer, I have bought multimeter, have tool set, need to get gloves, one more thing is, what about "Balance Charger/Discharger", some place mention needing more than one, do you recommend a specific one? the product OP mentioned on the first page is Out of Stock. Due to the complexity of switch the cell and uncertainly of the time this will last, I am also considering buying a re-conditioned battery pack which comes with come warranty so I wouldn't have to deal with too many details, but at the moment, I am on the fence, the part about balancing the cells are interesting, but I am not sure if the balancing charger would be easy to work with and all that.

 

OP was a long time ago now and lots has been learnt in the last 63 pages, its hard to summarise everything in one message but will try.

My chargers are ancient and no longer available so I can not recommend them! OP's chargers (hitec x4) later proved to be reasonably effective in charging but not so effective for discharging or load testing as they are limited to 5w discharge (700-800mA) Prius modules being 6500mA means discharge with these inferior chargers can take anywhere from 6-10 hours each module so it could take a month to go through each module just once! and its pointless anyway as 5W discharge is not an effective load test so you wont find your true capacities.. +100W has proven to be a reliable load test.

Hobby charger of choice seems to be reaKtor 300w these can discharge at 20A but you need to power the charger via a deep cycle 12v battery to make use of the 300W discharge feature, I think they can discharge around 80W if you power them via mains supply which is of course better than 5W but still not optimal.


If you cant be bothered messing around for days/weeks you could try pulling the pack out and identify any modules that clearly have lower surface voltage to all others (under 7V) swap out the questionable modules for known good modules while cross fingers and hope there's no other terminally bad modules snuck through! buy a grid charger and perform a discharge/ charge of the entire pack in one go to balance all modules in one hit and restore lost capacity. Lots of people swap modules then just drive car until it happens again, fail! these punters would have much more success if they bought a grid charger and restored lost capacity at the same time

 

Thanks so much, so, I think it is now a bit more clear as why some videos on youtube didn't mention the charger/discharger, they just tested all the cells and picked the ones that are out of range and replaced those with similar voltage on eBay, also, it explains why eBay have difference cells with different voltage clarified. It seems to be the simple route without evening needing to do the balancing,

So, I think I don't need to get the charger if get all the cells' voltage and replace a few. But one question is where is how much voltage difference required replacement. should I test all the cell voltage first, then decide the approach then?

 

Not quite, voltage test alone is good for detecting the really bad already failed modules however "borderline" modules may sneak past with reasonable surface voltage but capacity (mA) may be very low and pending failure. Its all about the mA's which can only really be tested or counted with hobby chargers.

Should always balance the pack when rebuilding this is the mistake lots of people make, its nice to balance even a good pack every once in a while, I would never recommend skipping that step however one might be tempted to cheat and balance the entire pack with a grid charger (after swapping out any definite bad modules!) rather than fumbling around for weeks with 5W hobby chargers!.

If most modules test 7.8*V (for instance) but you find one or two modules significantly lower like 6.8*V there is a chance changing just those low modules then balancing the whole pack via grid discharge/charge, might see you back on the road with some reasonable capacity. There's also a chance that some of the modules at 7.8v are actually pending failure due to low capacity and they might come back to bite you! this is why its always best practice to process every module individually with hobby chargers that can count capacity.

some packs have just one bad module, other packs have many!

 

Yes, thanks, it make sense to me that the voltage is a simple(uncertain) way to determine the cell health, I think once I have learned to remove/replace the battery cells, it is a more reasonable way to approach this than buy more tools(Ampere Meter, I assume that is needed), if the problem comes back, then re-consider doing more testing and fix. Maybe if I find someone local who can help with all the electrical stuff, I think if cell swap don't work well, it might be simpler to just buy a re-conditioned full pack with some warranty, the only seller close to San Diego I found is in North L.A. 3 hours drive, they require a pack switch, so, I also have to take out and put the battery pack in myself.

BTW, Hybrid Automotive 2004 2009 Toyota Prius Grid Charger Hybrid Battery re Balancer | eBay
this looks like the right thing to get right?

 

That's ok I hope you get it sorted out Its nice to learn how to service your battery, a good skill to have if you own an ageing hybrid.


Yep pretty sure that's the grid charger for your car but they may be cheaper directly from the sellers online shop rather than on ebay, maybe even try in the PriusChat shop I'm not 100% sure. Don't skip the gloves

 

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Good point about buying directly, but there website's product page don't show the product, maybe they prefer dealing through eBay.