reconditioning hybrid battery

If you mean a standard charger for 12 V automotive batteries......that is absolutely wrong.

AND.....if the battery is 14 years old and is showing signs of failing.....you likely have waited too long for "reconditioning" to really help much.....or any.

 

Are you looking to charge each module separately or the pack as a whole? If the former, it could take many days or even weeks to fully recondition all 28 modules three times with one charger. And that's if they all pass. If one or more fails during the process, then replacing those and balancing again would mean even more time.

Mileage (use) is important to life expectancy but age is a more critical factor in this scenario.

FWIW

GOOD LUCK!

 

How much is time worth? If the car can sit for days or weeks at a time, cheaper is a viable option. If you need it done over a long weekend, then a pack charger (prolong, maxxvolts, etc) is the way to go. Or get a new battery and not worry about it for 10+ more years.

 

Prolong Battery Systems | Hybrid Automotive California, USA

Maxx Volts 2004-2009 Toyota Prius EL-1 Traction Battery Grid Charger Balancer | eBay

They sometime pop up here in the F/S forum.

 

MaxxVolts listing=a sucker born every minute. Top charging, alone, will do little to help a battery. Unless of course, you believe the hype they have in their ad about it curing all the worlds problems.

If that were the case, then every HV battery that has the RTOD would fix itself, since they typically run the cooling fan non-stop and the engine runs continuously, staying in charge mode....

 

Battery pack get out of balance at the top and bottom of the charge. If you only top charge, you're only addressing half the problem. Prolong also has a discharger that you use multiple times alternating with the charger to lower the bottom of the charge a little at a time. Done right, on a battery that doesn't have any failed cells, it greatly extends a battery's capacity.

 

Maxx Volts system is awesome. I own their charger and pro discharger. Just used it on my Prius C that Dr Prius said was down to like 30% before use. I made a video of the process and results on my car I will upload when I get done editing it. They get a thumbs up from me.

 

I got the Maxx Volts Pro Discharger from their direct website at maxx-volts com. Your post makes it sounds like you didn't know they have this tool available. FYI.

 

I think you're confused on several levels. I own the maxx volts systems and even their least expensive model charger is discharge ready out of the box and is not made of plastic that melts from heat as I have read about elsewhere which happens on the prolong. I also own their Pro Discharger that does not have the voltage step limitations of the prolong. Apparently the prolong was ruining a number of batteries so they added "forced discharge" steps in their design to take the ability for the user to determine at what level to discharge to away from the user. For me, I don't need some company micromanaging how I want to complete the reconditioning process as it is not cookie cutter and not all batteries are the same age or condition.

Paying more and getting less? A hobby charger is like $28 bucks on ebay. The maxx volts system reconditions the packs of all 28 modules AT THE SAME TIME. So in order to accomplish the same with hobby chargers, you would need 28x chargers=$784.00 and to remove the entire battery from the vehicle, leaving it inoperable for a undetermined amount of time.

So say you want to try using 1x hobby charger to do it anyhow, how long would it take to cycle a module a few times in between your work schedule, having no car in the interim and pending there's no issues with the charger process (which is extremely common timeouts/aborts/thresholds exceeded)? 3-5 days? Now multiple this time 28x= 3-4 months (140 days?) .

Even if you were able to pull this much off, Nickel Metal Hydride is a self-discharging battery chemistry so the modules you finished 3 months ago, now have self discharged and or have reversed cells etc and the entire pack is way out of balance and cannot be utilized in a vehicle without codes. So you now have to remove all the modules and flip them around to wire them in parallel in order to try and balance the voltage as a whole from module to module? How long should you need to keep them connected? Another few days? Then what? You have to take out all the modules again and flip them around - + -+ -+ so they are back in order again spend countless hours of wasted time hoping that the modules are still within a few 0.1-0.2v from each other before putting the entire pack back in the vehicle again after 3-4 months and hoping your 12v battery isn't also dead or failed now due to not operating the vehicle for so long.

There's a hundred reasons why using a hobby charger is a stupid idea and a few of them from personal experience are listed above. There's a reason why these grid chargers are so popular, as they allow everyone from a hobbyist to a used car dealer to quickly connect a wiring harness to the hybrid battery in series and interface a WHOLE PACK charger and or discharger on an as needed basis to balance and recondition the entire pack in the least amount of downtime with the lowest amount of pain, suffering and anguish trying to reinvent the wheel.

 

You've likely read some of this thread already, and possibly this posting by @Phildo which suggests some charger options.

The hobby charger below is one of the best for the least, and will also require a power supply and better cables.

Charsoon antimatter dc 4x300w 20a synchronous balance charger discharger for lipo/life/nicd/pb battery Sale - Banggood.com

Banggood at one time had the quickest shipping at the lowest price, if you find a better deal please share it here for others.

The CQ3 is usable, and @TMR-JWAP has experience with this charger. It may have some firmware issues, and he would know.

For a simple DIY grid charger, grab a Meanwell HV power supply or an "Electrophoresis Power Supply" for under 100.

Examples of either might include :

LPC-100-350 MEAN WELL USA Inc. | Power Supplies - External/Internal (Off-Board) | DigiKey

BIO-RAD PowerPac 300 Electrophoresis Power Supply | eBay

No known affordable HV dischargers, but do post here is you find something useful.

 

Alex,

The first sentence you wrote applies to some of the items you posted also. So, how balanced is that OEM battery after doing the Grid Charge procedure? Are you sure? How do you know? Does it provide capacity data on 28 individual modules? Are there some 6800mah modules in that battery mixed with some 2000 mah modules? Maybe some 1000mah modules? Are you sure? How do you know? If you have a module that self discharges in 3 months to a level it is no longer useful, then guess what? That module shouldn't be in the battery to start with. You think more than 0.2v difference between modules will make the battery automatically code out? Are you sure about that?

There's advantages and disadvantages to both methods. It all depends on what the owner is trying to accomplish.

Are you one of these craigslist refurbishers? Grab a battery, swap any module that reads 5 or 6 volts, hit it with the grid charger and sell it to the next sucker with a 30 day warranty? Because if you think hitting a Prius Battery with a grid charger system is the solution to all the worlds problems, you are also "confused on several levels"

 

According to Maxx Volts' website's product page, they make a charger and a discharger. They are sold separately.

The deal breaker for me, unless I missed something, is that the entry level charger has no means of running the battery fan during charging. On the other hand, the advanced claims that it runs the battery fan after charging is complete, which is a nice touch although I can't see in the pictures any wires that would reach to the fan wiring of a Gen 2.

It's interesting to me that their entry level charger looks exactly like my first generation Prolong charger except for lacking a way to run the battery fan.