Hello Prius Gurus, I've read countless posts from Bob and other great minds regarding rebuilding/testing of traction battery cells and consider this forum the foremost expert on Priuses on the web today. I looked at Bob's analysis of charging the cells with the graphs, which was extremely intuitive but much went over my head as I have limited knowledge on these kinds of battery cells. I am in the process of reconditioning 3 Gen1 Priuses for sale. I have 2 Priuses in our family and have Priusitis. I have a small shop that I do my repairs in and rehab Gen1 and Gen2 cars to keep them on the road and out of the landfills. They are an incredible feat of genius engineering that just work. I could use the forums' help if you can. Anyway, I have two complete Gen1 traction battery packs that I bought for parts that have sat on a shelf for a very long time. They were deemed bad originally. I am trying to rehab these as two of the three Gen 1's I have need new traction batteries and one was completely missing. I've successfully rebuilt and re-balanced one for my own car, which has lasted two years now and going strong. My question is can you rehab cells that read 3.3vdc or less? If so what would the charge voltage and cycles be? How do I determine if they need Distilled water (great thread btw) ? Since I have not done this before, please bear with me as I am in the learning phase with this. I purchased two smart chargers, but never used one and need to know how to set them up to correctly charge these so they will not get damaged. To give you an example of the condition of these cells, here are the voltage readings I took . BTW, there were 3 cells that burned up that definitely need replacement: 1-6.69 10-4.07 19-3.49 28-2.46 37-6.12 2-6.69 11-4.75 20-4.67 29-3.61 38-7.34 3-3.73 12-4.74 21-2.37 30-4.72 4-7.48 13-1.34 22-3.73 31- 0.15 (bad) 5-5.95 14-4.84 23-4.97 32-6.19 6-1.62 15-4.85 24-Burned 33-Burned 7-3.59 16-4.36 25-2.58 34-Burned 8-2.88 17-3.71 26-2.57 35-2.82 9-3.51 18-1.35 27-1.48 36-3.30 As you can see, the readings were all over the place. Is there any hope or am I wasting my time? I consider myself intelligent as I have been in high-tech for 35 years with extensive experience in electronics, so I am capable of understanding technical information. I have Techstream and use it regularly for troubleshooting and analysis. I just need a bit of guidance in this area. I am also not wealthy, so I have to resort to repair rather than replace. Thank you all for your consideration with this.
I have found some long-term, discharged modules come back but mostly no. My hypothesis is some of the elements in the metal hydride leave the matrix and dissolve in the electrolyte. Once there, the hydrogen storage capacity is gone. However, other modules seem to recover. As for adding water, always use distilled but there is a hard problem, how to reseal after adding the water. Others have claimed different approaches but I'm not ready to endorse them, yet. Bob Wilson
Thank you for the responses so far. Allright, so that means essentially I have 6 possible cells out of 38 that POSSIBLY can be rehab'd. So at $30 a module, even at the very best of odds, I will need 32 modules equaling $960. My hope is that the other battery I purchased has a few good cells I can harvest. As far as charging, what would the correct voltage, amperage and discharge cycle be to charge the cells, and how to determine the mAh based on a discharge device such as a12v auto bulb? Again, i am not knowlegable enough to know when a cell is bad or not. Voltage alone does not determine the viability of a battery so i know I can't go by that.
This will provide voltage, current, capacity and power data to your heart's content: the 20A version: Dishargers - Battery Packs Delivered Fast, NiHM Batteries, NICAD Battery Packs | Only Battery Packs Inc, MaxxPacks.com Will give you about 17A load on your 6 cells and provide reasonable confidence in the health of the module. Charging at 6.5A or less with NiMH specific charger set to 3mV deltaV sensitivity and 8450mAh capacity cut-off.
Thanks S Keith. The dischargers look like what I made with the 12V auto bulbs so good to know I am on the right track. I'll have to order up an analyzer. Theyre cheap enough. Thank you on the charging specs. Much appreciated!