First Enginer PHEV install in the Portland Or area, Gen2

[dan2l]

Jan 5th 2009
I am starting this thread in the Gen2 plugin area because yesterday I put my kit into my 2005 Prius. This is temporary. When I get my Gen2 Kit then this one will go back into the 2010.

I took apart the car like Doax did on his video. I installed the Pig tail onto the HV terminals.


Black wire closest to the seat, Red wire closest to the back bumper.

I put the box in the car and loaded the batteries into it. I did 8 cells at a time and hooked all the wires up on the forward bank before putting in the second bank. I put them in with the terminals that connect to the cables from string to string toward the top so that they could be easier to access.

I put in the hold down bars and reconnected the balancers. I put on all cables and reconnected the buddycell jumpers. Note that I did the buddy cell with jumpers rather than with copper bars. The jumpers are the white wires in the following picture.

These jumpers allow me to easily check individual cells and also let me check the current levels flowing back and forth between the two banks of cells. The jumpers carry 1 amp or less during charging. They carry up to about 5 amps during discharge. I see more cell differences with measuring this current in the jumpers than I can see with the cell voltages. Note that I still used the Enginer provided red and black cable at the end of the bank because they carry 20a-30a.

I installed an orange SB50 Anderson connector on the pigtail.


This is so I can easily move the box from car to car. This connector is the same as Enginer uses on the charger except I chose orange to match the HV color used by Prius. Note that Anderson plugs are keyed with color so that you cannot plug an orange into a grey.

After reconnecting the Prius batteries. I put my DVM on the Prius side of this Anderson connector and turned the car on. I got between 200v and 230v with the red wire positive. I then turned off the car and put the DVM onto the Enginer side and turned the Kit on but got nothing. After an hour of frustration I was reading the Enginer instructions and found that I had not checked the 100a breaker. Did it again and got 245v with the red wire positive. Then I turned it all off and put the Anderson connector together and turned it on and it worked. 10a flowing through the cable to the Prius HV battery and 55a flowing from the engineer batteries to the converter.
More later,
Thanks,
Dan

[dan2l]

Jan 5th 2010 Evening
Hi Everyone,
I drove the car in pure EV mode for a mile with the headlights on last night. The Enginer system charged the Prius HV Battery from 5 bars to 8 bars. All was fine. The converter fan came on. But all temperatures were OK. This discharged about 3/4 kwhr from the Enginer battery.

The batteries were then left to balance overnight. The cells had a rest voltage of 3.331v to 3.351v in the morning.

In the morning I charged the system a second time. Here is the data.

Shown is both the 1st charge and the current for the 2nd charge. I aligned the charger shut down points assuming that the batteries had a similar SOC at that point. So you can see this charge took 80 minutes. It put 0.8kwhr into the batteries. The surprising thing is that it still ran for the first 30 minutes at constant current. This means that it was going through constant voltage mode for a shorter time and so the rate of change was much steeper. With no trickle on the end, shorter charges like this are higher risk of damage to a cell. The imbalance from cell to cell was at 160mv just before shutdown. I did not get any alarms.

I left the car to balance for about 4 hours and then took a drive. I drove for 23 miles and got 65.5mpg. I normally get 45mpg on this car doing this type of driving. So I am happy that the system worked as advertised.

The Prius HV Battery stayed at 7 bars. After 3 miles I got a VCS light and did not know what it was. No error codes. I turned off the Enginer kit and drove for another 3 miles. Including stopping and turning the Prius power Off and On 3 times to try to clear the light. I could not clear the light this way. The Prius Battery was then down to 5 bars so I turned the Enginer system back on and drove on. After another 3 miles I was back to 7 bars. I then parked the car for about an hour. After that when I started it again the VCS light was cleared. I drove home with the Enginer kit on all the way and no problems. I did not fully use the capacity of the Enginer batteries. I will see how much charge they take in the morning.

Thanks,
Dan

[Daox]

Glad to see the move to the 2nd gen is going smoothly. What voltage are you charging your pack to?

[linuxpenguin]

Originally Posted by dan2l

Jan 5th 2010 Evening
Hi Everyone,
I drove the car in pure EV mode for a mile with the headlights on last night. The Enginer system charged the Prius HV Battery from 5 bars to 8 bars. All was fine. The converter fan came on. But all temperatures were OK. This discharged about 3/4 kwhr from the Enginer battery.

The batteries were then left to balance overnight. The cells had a rest voltage of 3.331v to 3.351v in the morning.

In the morning I charged the system a second time. Here is the data.
Attachment 20902
Shown is both the 1st charge and the current for the 2nd charge. I aligned the charger shut down points assuming that the batteries had a similar SOC at that point. So you can see this charge took 80 minutes. It put 0.8kwhr into the batteries. The surprising thing is that it still ran for the first 30 minutes at constant current. This means that it was going through constant voltage mode for a shorter time and so the rate of change was much steeper. With no trickle on the end, shorter charges like this are higher risk of damage to a cell. The imbalance from cell to cell was at 160mv just before shutdown. I did not get any alarms.

I left the car to balance for about 4 hours and then took a drive. I drove for 23 miles and got 65.5mpg. I normally get 45mpg on this car doing this type of driving. So I am happy that the system worked as advertised.

The Prius HV Battery stayed at 7 bars. After 3 miles I got a VCS light and did not know what it was. No error codes. I turned off the Enginer kit and drove for another 3 miles. Including stopping and turning the Prius power Off and On 3 times to try to clear the light. I could not clear the light this way. The Prius Battery was then down to 5 bars so I turned the Enginer system back on and drove on. After another 3 miles I was back to 7 bars. I then parked the car for about an hour. After that when I started it again the VCS light was cleared. I drove home with the Enginer kit on all the way and no problems. I did not fully use the capacity of the Enginer batteries. I will see how much charge they take in the morning.

Thanks,
Dan

Hi Dan,

Was it just the VSC light? Did you experience any other codes during your installation at any point?...

Your ScanGauge (I assume you have one) probably isn't configured to check for VSC codes (or it could be a proprietary Toyota code which may or may not show up on said scanner).

If it was only the VSC light that may indicate an actual problem with the vehicle. If it was more than just the VSC light (eg: accompanied by the ABS and possibly a red triangle) that /could/ indicate a much more serious problem like high voltage isolation (current flowing from the high voltage battery to the chassis). Hard to say without knowing more lights (if any) that came on.

Do be careful, that's a lot of power you have in the trunk...

Andrew

[DaveinOlyWA]

Dan; are you bringing your Pri to the meet up in Portland the 16th?

[dan2l]

Originally Posted by DaveinOlyWA

Dan; are you bringing your Pri to the meet up in Portland the 16th?

Hi Dave,
Yes, That is my plan. It will not be bolted down because I will eventually move it to my wifes car. But it is in the box and complete. I still need to do a better job of puting the switch in the dash.

Thanks,
Dan

[dan2l]

Jan 6th 2010
Hello everyone,
I let the cells balance overnight. Then charged in the morning. It took almost 3 hours and put 2kwhr into the battery. I was 190mv away from an alarm. This seems to happen when the charging current is at around 10 amps. The cells tend to have their worst balance at that point. Then as the charging current drops, the cells tend to recover a little and the balance gets better.

I let the car set for about 4 hours. Then I took the car for an 18 mile drive. Again I got warnings lights, VSC and ABS. They came on when I was at 7 bars and had hit the brakes coming into a stop sign. I think my converter voltage is set just a little too high. After parking the car to go into Radio Shack for 10 minutes the lights were cleared.

After that I turned off the Enginer system at 6 bars and back on at about 4 bars and did not get the lights again.

I got 62.6 mpg for this 18 miles so that is a total of 64.2 mpg for 41miles, with 2 warm ups.

I still just get this feeling that I need to improve my driving technique even though I realize that These are good numbers.

Thanks,
Dan Lander

[linuxpenguin]

Originally Posted by dan2l

Jan 6th 2010
Hello everyone,
I let the cells balance overnight. Then charged in the morning. It took almost 3 hours and put 2kwhr into the battery. I was 190mv away from an alarm. This seems to happen when the charging current is at around 10 amps. The cells tend to have their worst balance at that point. Then as the charging current drops, the cells tend to recover a little and the balance gets better.
Attachment 20916
I let the car set for about 4 hours. Then I took the car for an 18 mile drive. Again I got warnings lights, VSC and ABS. They came on when I was at 7 bars and had hit the brakes coming into a stop sign. I think my converter voltage is set just a little too high. After parking the car to go into Radio Shack for 10 minutes the lights were cleared.

After that I turned off the Enginer system at 6 bars and back on at about 4 bars and did not get the lights again.

I got 62.6 mpg for this 18 miles so that is a total of 64.2 mpg for 41miles, with 2 warm ups.

I still just get this feeling that I need to improve my driving technique even though I realize that These are good numbers.

Thanks,
Dan Lander

Hi Dan,

The ABS/VSC lights wont come on if your traction battery voltage is too high--you probably have something actually wrong with your car (specifically, the brakes / vehicle stability control). Does the red triangle come on too?

I assume this is still on the Gen2 Prius?

Andrew

[dan2l]

Originally Posted by linuxpenguin

Hi Dan,

The ABS/VSC lights wont come on if your traction battery voltage is too high--you probably have something actually wrong with your car (specifically, the brakes / vehicle stability control). Does the red triangle come on too?

I assume this is still on the Gen2 Prius?

Andrew

Hi Andrew,
Thanks for your input.
No red triangle. No noticable change in the way the car drives or handles but I was not driving it like I drive my MGA. No error codes on the OBDII. It will not clear with a quick off/on but does clear with 10 minutes off. It has happened 2 times both at about 3-5 miles from the first start in the morning.

The car is a 2005 I have only had it for a month.

Thanks again,
Dan

[linuxpenguin]

Originally Posted by dan2l

Hi Andrew,
Thanks for your input.
No red triangle. No noticable change in the way the car drives or handles but I was not driving it like I drive my MGA. No error codes on the OBDII. It will not clear with a quick off/on but does clear with 10 minutes off. It has happened 2 times both at about 3-5 miles from the first start in the morning.

The car is a 2005 I have only had it for a month.

Thanks again,
Dan

Hi Dan,

Sounds like a legit problem with the ABS/traction control system. The ScanGauge likely will not pick up the DTC since it is probably not configured to scan for those codes (proprietary non-standard Toyota codes possibly dealing with regenerative braking). You may need to take it in to the dealer to have it checked out.

The fact that a light came on indicates that a code was set at one point and is now stored in your skid control ECU (even if the light goes away...some DTC codes will go away once they don't occur during an entire drive however that doesn't mean the problem is gone).

I doubt it is directly related to the conversion with the main HV battery (I suppose it could be possibly be aggravated by the conversion) though it's possible when you were installing the wiring in the front you nicked a wire going to the HVECU or something (or possibly the skid control ECU, but that's pretty far inside the dash. Maybe while pulling the EV wire?)...you might also try wiggling those connectors behind the passenger side glove box to see if anything is loose.

You said it happens when the car is stopping--does it happen when you brake more forcefully than other times? If so it might indicate a loose wire.

Andrew