What type of connector does a Prolong Charger/Discharger use?

Charged it up to full over 20 hours. This time, it did not stabilize at 238.95V like the previous 2 runs, but rather climbed to 238.30V, then gradually declined to 232.56 over a few hours. I think this is the normal negative delta-v behavior for fully charged NiMH batteries, so it looks like my pack is getting healthier.

Last discharge cycle at 400ohm, to 84V, 24h, 6Ah termination.


Finished 10:27:10 hours later, with 4.8002Ah capacity. Since the brand new capacity is 6.5Ah, it looks like my battery is at 74% health. Voltage climbed back up to 174.18V after discharge, which according to Olrowdy, is a good sign.


I did a another discharge to 84V just to be sure. It terminated rather quickly in 24:09min, with just 0.0950Ah discharged, so I don't think it was necessary. I don't think there is much energy left in the battery at 84V, so I decided against discharging to 17V. I'll need to research further whether the risk is worth it for further reconditioning the cells.


I let it sit for about an hour until it recovered to 150V. This way, I did not have to use the Y dongle to hook up the Electronic Load in series, to avoid having the Mean Well supply go into hiccup mode. It also let me cool down the battery before charging again as I left the fan running in the meantime.


4.8Ah capacity at 350mA charge rate is about 14h, 70% charge efficiency takes me to 20h. I should be finally done at 6am tomorrow!

 

Everything went as expected. It charged up to 238.43V overnight, then slowly dropped to 237.54V over the next few hours.

I disconnected everything, and even had a chance to test my multimeter dongle.


Now for the bad news. I re-ran Dr Prius Life expectancy tests, and it says 41% (up from 30% before reconditioning). Not as good as I hoped, and it probably means this 13 year old battery is in it's last legs.

What should I do next? The test ended because of low voltage on module 9, and module 7 was always low. Should I try replacing these 2 modules and try again?

 

@Panicos I’m not exactly sure how you are looking at the connector, but if you are looking straight on at the fan connector, with the tab on top, the top right is 12v, and the bottom 2 are ground. Just search in this forum and you will see posts with wiring diagrams and pictures. I also have a close up picture of the connection in one of the posts above.

You can power the fan externally while the car is running, but you will get an error code since the fan is disconnected from the control module.

If you just want to power the fan to cool down the battery after driving, just use the fan speed option in the Dr Prius app. If you power on the car without pressing the brakes, the car will turn on but the engine won’t run. The app needs to be running, and you can actually hear the fan ramp up when you open the app. It also monitors the battery temperature so you know when to stop.

 

Yep, that’s the right angle, looking directly at the pigtail from the blower. Not visible in the picture, but the 2 black wires are shorted together.

I’m not sure if not disconnecting and just splicing the wire would cause any issues, since I didn’t try it. However, the commercial offerings from Prolong and Maxx Volts do splice the wires, so it should work. You may want to ask in the grid charger threads.

 

Sorry @Panicos, I think my assumption that the Prolong harness splices the fan wires is incorrect. If you look at their installation instructions, they want you to plug their fan control unit between the fan and the control module. They probably have some sort of switch or relay to disconnect the fan from the control module before applying power to the fan. I just want to make sure you know that it may not be safe to apply power to the control module via the fan connector.

 

Hi @bdc101, the OEM is Sumitomo. Just search for “Sumitomo Type 090 TS”.

Here’s a place that sells genuine connectors.

●[sumitomo]090 Type TS /waterproofing/ female terminal /F090WP-TS - hi-1000ec.com

Unfortunately, shipping is a bit high if you need just 4.

90980-10795 is just the housing. You need to buy the terminals separately. It’s cheaper if you just buy the OEM housing when you order the terminals, instead of from Toyota.

●[sumitomo] 090 type TS series 4 pole F connector（no terminals）/4P090-SMTS-F-tr - hi-1000ec.com

 

The fully charged voltage I reported is what I see for my battery pack before the voltage starts dropping. You may see slightly different voltages. The exact value is not important. If you have no good way of detecting the voltage drop, just charge for 24 hours max.

I used 84 volts because that's what Prolong recommends, and this was my first build, so I did not want to mess up my battery. That said, if you read the Honda forums, there are posts that reported good success with going almost to 0V, and supposedly, that reconditions the battery better.

Yes, 0.1C is the safe trickle charge, where you can basically charge forever. That is the whole premise behind normalizing the battery modules. You basically overcharge the fully charged modules at a safe rate, while slowly charging the other cells, so eventually all the cells are fully charged. The only thing you have to watch out for is heat, as any over charge current is dissipated as heat. That's why we power up the fan separately.

These batteries can be discharged at really high rates (10C or more), as this is what happens when you drive. What you need to be careful of is when the module voltage is very low. If any cell in it is fully discharged, you will reverse the voltage on that cell, and that will destroy it. If you can control the discharge accurately, you can save quite a bit of time by discharging at really high rates until the cell voltage is low (about 100V, depending on your risk tolerance), then drop the discharge rate. Any lower than 84V, I would not discharge at higher than 0.1C. I think that's the max safe discharge rate because reversing the voltage on a cell would basically just trickle charge it. The other big concern when discharging at high rates is heat.

 

What discharge profile to use is a decision you will need to determine for yourself, base on your risk tolerance. The manufacturer will not condone reconditioning their batteries, so you won't find anything in the data sheets. And all you see in the forums is anecdotal data on what worked, or not.

My 3 discharge cycles used the Prolong recommended breakpoints of 84V/101V/134V . I used the safe trickle charge rate of C/20, about 325mA, when charging above 134V, or discharging below 84V.