Who to choose for Refurbished HV battery

Sagebrush:
Here at falcon hybrid we do not replace one module and call it a day. We do a full capacity and relative resistance test on each module that comes in and bin them accordingly. once we have 28 cells that are within an except-able range of each we build them into a pack and run them on a custom made simulator that puts strains on the battery that the car wouldn't allow. Only after passing all of these tests is a pack given a serial number and sent out.
At any given time we have between 800-1500 modules in the bins.

We've had many people call up asking about "balancing out the pack"
a common misconception is that its possible to take 28 modules and "balance them"
you can balance out their SOC (state of charge) but you can't balance out their relative resistance ("relative" because it changes constantly depending on SOC and Temp) and can't balance out their relative capacity. We've found that of the 3 SOC balancing is the least important and will correct itself on its own, the others wont.
( basically how this happens is a NIMH battery self discharges %30 in the first 24 hours after a charge, so a higher SOC module will drop more in that time than a lower SOC module, in about a week this will bring all the cells to the same SOC)

A better term for proper rebuilding is "Matching" Modules.

If you want to learn more about our reconditioning process feel free to give us a call at 845-367-2091

Cheers
Mark Sokol

 

r

 

Sounds like they are a pretty small operation to have nothing available. I wonder how he pulled the 2 years and 4 years numbers out? Oh I guess he did use the "expected" term.

 

I purchased a rebuilt battery for my Prius ! with GEN II cells. I paid a premium and the battery had a foult initially but driving for a while I could reset the code 3006. To make a long story shorter after a month and a half (waiting for over a month for shipment in the first place) the battery failed. Another month + and no word form Falcon or prius rebuilders on the warranty replacement as promised.
I took the car to a shop in Ft Walton and they removed and inspected the battery and found two bad cells and of the rest of the cells 1/2 tested OK and the rest were marginal. These cells are from 2004 and the tech said that these were the oldest cells he had ever seen!.
Basiclly these cells were just slightly better than the scrap that Prius Rebuilders and Falcon purchase as scrap in bulk.
In my opinion you are far better off taking your car to a local guy and have him test and change the bad cells like I ended up having to do to get my car running again.
Do not trust these people and save your money and time and deal with honest trustworthy companies.
If you read other bad reviews don't think that one bad report can happen to anyone like I did. They are bad news and stay away from them.
By the time you have fought over replacement and paid freight and received a battery that is as big of a question mark as the one you removed you could buy one from a reputable company or have a speciaist replace a few bad cells and be better off.
Dont believ their hype on having batteries ready to ship. It was over a month to get my first (bad) battery and over a month and I still have not heard that my (questionable) warranty replacement is ready.
Abe Sokol had lied to be from start to finish and he will lie to you as well!
Stay Away

 

well said. unfortunately, most don't know who to trust.

 

Hey, you're over on Fred's, aren't you?

 

That approach is easily as much of a crapshoot as buying a 'rebuilt' battery.

 

whatyour warranty?

 

Yes I am I have 2009 and a 2013 JSW's.

Yes replacing one or two cells is also a crap shoot, but it cost less and you are not at the mercy of unscrupulous rebuilders who charge for good pullout cells and deliver basically scrap and lie about what they will do from first to last.

As to warranty with the $400. 00 core charge and freight and having to R&R the battery and being lied to again as to how long it would take to get the warrant replacement ready and the questionable quality control you can forget this outfit.

Abe Sokol emailed me this morning to say they were getting ready to start building two Gen I batteries after letting them know I had a problem on MAY 2ND! He said originally it would take 5 - 7 days to get the battery ready, just like he did when I first sent him my money.

I ordered the replacement JAN 8th. and it did not ship until Feb 4th.

That battery had a P3006 fault until I drove it around for a while and reset the codes several times. This battery never worked correctly because they cut the line between barely acceptable and unacceptable a little too close.

My advice is to never trust a word that they say!

The guys that fixed the battery took about three hours to remove, troubleshoot the bad cells, show me what was wrong and the poor overall condition of the rebuild and replace the cells and reinstall. The first time this year the car and battery has worked correctly.

You are correct in that you take a gamble replacing the bad cells, but not as big a gamble as dealing with Prius Rebuilders / Falcon Hybrid Solutions, and Mark and Abe Sokol.

They talk a good game going in, but fail at every point after they have your money.
I think that they should at least refund the $400.00 I paid to some knowledgeable guys to repair their shoddy product and work quality.
I paid good money for basically scrap cells (at least 1/2 of them anyway plus the two really bad ones).
$1450 for 30 days of limping around on a POS battery!

From Jan 6 to July 4th to take care of what should have been a quick job!

" Here at falcon hybrid we do not replace one module and call it a day. We do a full capacity and relative resistance test on each module that comes in and bin them accordingly. once we have 28 cells that are within an except-able range of each we build them into a pack and run them on a custom made simulator that puts strains on the battery that the car wouldn't allow. Only after passing all of these tests is a pack given a serial number and sent out.
At any given time we have between 800-1500 modules in the bins."

No they don't they select the cells that they bought as scrap and use them after force charging them to get them to take some level of charge and install these to replace what might be better cells in your core. The 1/2 of the cells I got measured better than the cut off and were OK, but the remainder were marginal and so much for the matching that is so carefully done. so I guess that 50 % is good enough match! Of course this is forgetting about those two really bad cells that were the straw that broke the camel's back.
Mark, How about that refund? You have never deliver an acceptable product to me! I am out the $1450 and freight and use of the car for nearly 6 months!.

Will you man up and admit you have screwed up again and do the right thing and send me my money?
How about it for all of the observers here on the forum?/

 

Wow, I never thought you can provide a customer bad module(s) while swapping out their good modules. That would give you an endless supply of good modules and you can PAID for it too.

 

A couple hours of work that RedBarron paid for to swap a few modules almost certainly did not pay for any balancing. I predict a very short life for that "fixed" traction battery.

 

You know, I've been watching this battery rebuild thing for a long time now and here are my observations/suggestions.

1) The best thing you can do for your car is to buy a new battery from Toyota. This is more expensive but, a much better fix.
2) All the rebuilders have problems and shipping the battery back to them for repair eats all your savings over a new battery.
3) A few individuals have had great success rebuilding their battery by utilizing a painstaking process to charge and balance the entire pack to a minimum of 7000mah

It is for this reason that I recommend simply buying a new battery from Toyota and skipping every other solution (unless you're willing to do the entire balancing/reconditioning yourself. Even then, you still have old cells.).

 

Better that the sorry job Prius Rebuilders did. The match they did, evidently was to match the worst cells that might work to keep from investing any good parts into the unit. If they were match then why were there two distinct sets of batteries by charge state.
Prius Rebuilders definitely had the time to do it right and FAILED miserably.
It has taken them over a month to put together a GEN I battery probably because they had problems scraping together enough batteries to match. Matching the very worst cells is not Matching, it is selling scrap cells for good money. These GEN II cells were 2004, the very oldest available. Pretty good matching all very old and they probably sat discharged for a long time as well. These did not hold up for the elngth of time it took to ship from New Jersey to Alabama. The battery had a P3006 fault when installed! I was able to get it to take a little charge and get over 7.1 volts (the cutoff), but the battery was never really right and the charge level dropped quickly and while it sat in the parking lot at work!
The "FIXED" battery that won'r hold up is way better than the "CRAP" that I bought from Prius Rebuilders / Falcon Hybrid Solutions. Fly by night beats the guy that is the best with carefully matching etc. To this I say %#@*())!

 

usnavystgc is probably right in what he says and if you value the car enough then that is the thing to do.
It is hard to put more than the car is worth into a 13 year old Prius with the distinct possibility of other expensive problems as well.
Un to this point my Prius has been the very model of reliability. The only breakdown in reliability has bee my experiences with Prius Rebuilders / Falcon Hybrid Solutions. I repeat their names often so that the search engines can find them easily.
If they won't stand behind their product the everyone should know!

 

My conclusions as well. I wonder if the Prius community could organize and disperse the expertise required to install DIY. I'm thinking mostly of the steps required to move the electronics and wires etc from the old to the new battery. If we could make it widespread that a (really) new, unused battery swap is $2000 + $200 for help if needed, and not $3000+ it would be quite a benefit to the entire Prius owning community and a boon to hybrids in general.

 

The thing with the new batteries is the tax. A $2200 battery would be $2400+ and then added labor of $300 if needed will bring to the total to $2700......that would would be a "deal"

 

If you buy a rebuilt locally so that the warranty might actually be worth something, you are paying tax then, too.

 

My guess is that Prius Rebuilders / Falcon Hybrid Solutions took two core GEN II batteries from in at least one case a 2004 gen II and stacked that with some other old gen II and then " matched them by charging hell out of them until they showed over 7.1 volts and then shipped me the battery. Two cells discharged before I could get the thing installed in less than three days. The battery threw codes from the start, but after driving around for a while the code cleared, but the charge graph showed the charge changing constantly. I did not drive the day for a few days, but the battery never recovered from sitting.
I am looking forward to Mark Sokol answering this since he posted earlier about what a good job they do. I doube that he will answer this on his many other customers who are disappointed with his product and customer service.
Everyone here should make sure that no more unsuspecting Prius owners are taken in by this group!
I plan to search out every forum and review that mentions Prius Rebuilders or Falcon Hybrid Solutions and make certain that I do my part to help them along their way to insolvency if they are not already there.
It would be nice to receive a refund from this group of incompetents. To be generous I would not call them crooks, but the result is the same. I had to pay 1/3 again to get their defective battery patched.
To all of those that think as I did that one problem can happen to anyone, but poor customer service and and repeated poor quality and lack of action to correct them prove that this is not an isolated case.
DO NOT DEAL WITH THESE PEOPLE and again so that the search engines can find the correct information. PRIUS REBUILDERS / FALCON HYBRID SOLUTIONS CANNOT BE TRUSTED.
PRIUS REBUILDERS / FALCON HYBRID SOLUTIONS CANNOT BE TRUSTED
PRIUS REBUILDERS / FALCON HYBRID SOLUTIONS CANNOT BE TRUSTED
PRIUS REBUILDERS / FALCON HYBRID SOLUTIONS CANNOT BE TRUSTED
PRIUS REBUILDERS / FALCON HYBRID SOLUTIONS CANNOT BE TRUSTED
PRIUS REBUILDERS / FALCON HYBRID SOLUTIONS CANNOT BE TRUSTED
PRIUS REBUILDERS / FALCON HYBRID SOLUTIONS CANNOT BE TRUSTED
PRIUS REBUILDERS / FALCON HYBRID SOLUTIONS CANNOT BE TRUSTED
PRIUS REBUILDERS / FALCON HYBRID SOLUTIONS CANNOT BE TRUSTED

 

is probably not much worse or better than most of the rebuilders around. This site has been warning about the risks of buying rebuilds for years now, and I personally took the time to aggregate a list of vendors who sell unused, new, traction batteries. I try to steer people away from rebuilds, but people like you ignore the advice.

So be it. Look in the mirror.

 

Thanks for the help! Nice to have sympathy.
You are correct about it being my fault and it won't happen again from me.
However I do appreciate someone who can help.