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What to do with two HV batteries?

Discussion in 'Gen 2 Prius Main Forum' started by Lone_Cricket212, Jan 12, 2024.

  1. Lone_Cricket212

    Lone_Cricket212 Junior Member

    Joined:
    Oct 8, 2023
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    Location:
    New York
    Vehicle:
    2004 Prius
    Model:
    II
    About three months ago I got the red triangle of death. I started to look into reconditioning the battery but I really needed my car. I got impatient and bought a battery from a wrecked car. It also gave me a code so I ended up just figuring the first one.
    I cycled the batteries on the first battery, got them to at least 5300 mAh, balanced them and got the battery running. Two months later, the code came back. To be fair, I was pushing the Prius pretty hard working for UPS.
    I am cycling the modules again, and this time I'm going to do a load test after balancing.

    But I still have the second battery. I started cycling those modules too and they're actually reaching 5500 mAh pretty quickly.

    So my dilemma: do I keep one battery? If so which one? Do I keep both in case I have an issue again? I'd so, how should I store it? I have an 04 with 228k miles. Hoping It last a couple years. Should I sell both, possibly fix a third and buy a new one from Toyota? Thanks in advance for your advice and opinions.
     
    #1 Lone_Cricket212, Jan 12, 2024
  2. Tombukt2

    Tombukt2 Senior Member

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    Nov 29, 2020
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    Location:
    Durham NC
    Vehicle:
    2009 Prius
    Model:
    Base
    228,000 mi and what 17 years old The average hybrid battery as far as we can tell is averaging 8 to 10 so how much over that are you and you're just going to carry on until that's exactly right I wouldn't expect it to be a lot longer though to be honest about it I know where there is a car that's got 400,000 miles on its original battery and I imagine any day it's going to fail miserably but until it does the owner keeps driving hasn't really done any code throwing or anything else and got a brake actuator a few months ago That's about it. I don't even know what it's SOC ratings or any of that kind of stuff is I didn't have the car that long to run any testing on but it seemed to drive fine but that is certainly pushing the limits of the battery I think the car was garage most of its life so no leaking water in the trunk and dropping in the battery and all of that going on.
     
    #2 Tombukt2, Jan 12, 2024
  3. Frontporch

    Frontporch Member

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    Dec 18, 2015
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    Location:
    Nj
    Vehicle:
    2007 Prius
    Model:
    N/A
    I am curious about this as well. From what I learned the conditioning is not a fast process unless you invest in many chargers to condition each of the battery modules. I have some spare cells that I got from a scrap yard. Voltage was good when pulled but now after sitting on a shelf for a year not sure what their condition is

    There are some whole battery reconditioning “machines” but they aren’t cheap. There is a long post on this site about a $100 DIY system but I have not tackled reading that thread
     
    #3 Frontporch, Jan 13, 2024
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