Warning lights :(

Well I know the local Toyota dealer. My history is one of being in the local motor trade for 20 years or so before I got into electronics. My reason for leaving the motor trade was that I needed to learn about electronics as vehicles couldn't be mended if you didn't know about electronics. I just never went back to it professionally once I had learned though I still do some for local garages.

In short I wouldn't trust them to wash the windshield, they just do not know anything about this car. I need to make sure of the fault and the cure before I go there otherwise it may come back with a 5k bill and work no differently.

Besides all that it's a lot more interesting looking into it (with your help) than it is taking it to a third party and forking out a month's wages.

 

Voltages on load. Any comments?

DATA STREAM VALUE/STATUS

Battery Blck 14.74 V
Voltage 1
Battery Blck 14.69 V
Voltage 2
Battery Blck 14.67 V
Voltage 3
Battery Blck 14.63 V
Voltage 4
Battery Blck 14.54 V
Voltage 5
Battery Blck 14.64 V
Voltage 6
Battery Blck 14.61 V
Voltage 7
Battery Blck 14.60 V
Voltage 8
Battery Blck 14.60 V
Voltage 9
Battery Blck 14.57 V
Voltage 10
Battery Blck 14.62 V
Voltage 11
Battery Blck 14.66 V
Voltage 12
Battery Blck 14.63 V
Voltage 13
Battery Blck 14.62 V
Voltage 14
Battery Blck 14.69 V
Voltage 15
Battery Blck 14.67 V
Voltage 16
Battery Blck 14.65 V
Voltage 17
Battery Blck 14.73 V
Voltage 18
Battery Blck 14.73 V
Voltage 19

 

OK

So ECU schematics are the next step, I can probably look at that with the gear I have at home, off I go to find some pictures of the offending article.

Many many thanks for all the input. I will leave the thread there until I return to the UK. I will report again when I find more information and of report on the final outcome, new thread maybe, it depends.

Thanks again.

 

An update, not cured yet but of interest I think.

My little sister (46 years old last week) bless her little cotton socks, decide to take the car to the local Toyota garage, this is the one I expressed concern about earlier in the thread.

It took them 45 minutes to confirm that there was indeed a 3000 error logged and they didn't know what to do about it.

What they did (at my sister's suggestion) was to ring a Toyota garage that did know about these things. This turned out to be the one about 30 miles away. I know that at that particular garage there is a mechanic who knows these things with his eyes closed so was interested to see what he had to say. The original garage did not charge anything but the second one wanted around £45 if it turned out to be not warranty.

Incidentally the first garage said the battery and associated electronics were covered by 8 years or 100k miles, the second garage (receptionist) said it was 7 years and 100k miles.

This was last Friday (27th Nov), today we got their results.

There is nothing wrong with the battery, the fault is with the battery ECU. This is not covered under warranty as the boot (trunk) has water in and that has caused the problem.

Conclusion warranty on these things aint worse squat, it's interesting to think that a 90 year old man is to blame when Toyota make a car that gets damaged in wet weather.

It is quite sad that Toyota with all their years of experience cannot make a ECU box for electronics that keeps water out.

So it's down to me to fix it.

 

I actually checked the trunk seal a few of months ago, I knew there was a water problem and it was the first consideration when this battery problem happened.

The seal is good, I concluded that it is condensation at that time but I haven't seen the car for a few months, I will give it a more thorough check when I get back.

It sucks being shut in the trunk while people squirt water at you but needs must

 

So, back int the UK, major dismantling happening.

I knew I should not have taken it to Toyota. Every single bolt on the battery and it's cover had been tightened to the verge of snapping, my normal rachet or T bar were not big enough, I had to resort to spanner and plastic hammer to get them undone. The security torque screw had been stripped in place as had several of the 10 mm (head size) bolts, most of the 13mm bolts have been stretched so they need spannering all the way out..

Following this

Installing a Prius HV Battery

as a rough guide of what to do. What is scaring me right now is that I would have thought that a disconnect on the opposite end of the battery stack would have been necessary to increase safety but it seems that this is not the case and I am going to have to remove the ECU within 2 inches of the 270 odd volts of the HV battery, I am still thinking I have missed something somewhere.

I was planning on doing it in the car but now reckon I will remove the whole thing and get it on the bench, less risk of blowing myself up and less risk of the cat jumping on the terminals, he likes cars in the cold weather.

 

No water damage at all on any of the bolts, they have just been seriously overtightened.

The voltage is way over 135 on the small buzz bars on the LHS of the battery. It leaks away once the meter is on but it comes back again. I don't know if this is normal or if it is a sign of leakage from the water. Definitely on the small bolts along the edge of the battery cells there is green so I reckon all bolts out, clean and replace with some vaseline, long job

 

Fixed

Decided against doing the job at home adn having got the battery to the point where it would come out I put in a minimum number of bolts and connections, left it overnight and drove it to a friends garage this morniing.

Removed battery and got it on the bench, ECU out and in bits, no damage, it has a pretty crap case but the quality of the electronics is excellent and sealed after assembly, it was perfect.

The cells had soem verdigree on but not really what I considered to be enough to conduct, no paths from a cell bolt to ground or between cell bolts.

The problem was the crap caramel / treacle / rock that they ahd put on the terminals presumably to stop exactly the problem I had. Note to Toyota, if you want to stop self discharge across the terminals use something that does not go conductive when it gets old.

So that's it basically, I pulled the whole battery apart, removed all the bus bars, cleaned them, broke the cells apart because the crap they had put on stuck them all together, cleaned them and reassembled.

Total time 3 hours yeaterday, 6 hours today and another 3 tomorrow to put the seats and stuff back in.

Next step, a stinking letter to Toyota, no way was this water damage and under anyone's description it was a warranty job.

 

Done 20 miles and always it came back after clearing the fault within 15 seconds of the engine starting.

I didn't replace the ECU, I jsut pulled it apart to check and it was perfect.

Cleaning the battery terminals and the bus bars was all that was needed. Doesn't sound much but it has taken a long time of scratching and scraping to get the treacle off. I took some pics but can't find my camera lead, I'll post some bits later showing the conductive stuff that had to be removed.

With all the bus bars removed so that each cell stood alone then on adjacent cells I was measuring between 5 and 16 volts with my DVM, admittedly it is very high impedance but obviously this should not be the case. I split the pack and forced the cells to separate and the voltage dropped to between 3 and 50 mV. When pushed together again the voltage came back so I jsut scrubbed and scraped and brushed and squirted it with WD40 until I could tighten the end bolts on the pack and still have less than .1 volts across any two adjacent cells.

Much scraping of bus bars and reassemble and that was it.

 

This is the stuff that had to be removed because it was conductive.

 

There is no electrolyte leakage. The stuff that looks like it was running down was like concrete, it hasn't run out from anywhere it has been applied by someone. If you pulled a lump off then it was kind of like hard rubber. It was on the orange plastic that the bus bars sit in as well, definitely stuck on there after assembly of the battery block.

 

Whole battery and ECU

What are the small felt pads under the +ve terminals for?