First Enginer PHEV install in the Portland Or area, Gen2

Hi Banshee08,
I am sorry, I abbreviated and you may have misunderstood. My term Regen is intended to be regenerative braking. We all do that all the time. Also, I do have one big hill that I have to be careful on. It is my understanding that braking can add 10volts to the Prius battey pack for a short period of time.

Also the Gen 3 does much better on higher speed EV and stealth than the Gen 2. I have both a Gen 3 and a Gen 2 and I always get 10mpg beter on the Gen 3. On the other hand the Gen 2 will let the forced EV mode to stay engaged to a higher speed.

Thanks,
Dan

 

Hi Andrew,
I checked the brake fluid level and removed all 4 wheels and inspected brakes and suspension. Everything looks OK. Boy, the back drums are small they look like what was on my Austen Healy Sprite. I guess you don't need much because of regenerative braking.

Only one time I got an ABS with the VSC. 4 other times it is the VSC alone. It always clear with the car off for 10 minutes and then does not come back that day.

I do not have a ScanGauge. The monitor I have only does the normal stuff and is not configurable.

I spoke with a local shop and it is $120-$180 So I assume $120 just to get the codes. Does this cost sound about right?

Maybe someone that has the right equipment could bring it to the Portland HSD meeting next week and I could get the codes then.

Thanks,
Dan

 

Hi Chan,
I swapped the connectors from balancers #3 and#4 and the problem stayed with the balancer, so it looks like all the wires are OK.

Jack has a new Balancer on the way.

Thanks,
Dan

 

Jan 9th 2010
I charged last night and got several false balancer alarms from the balancer that is intermittent. Then I got a real one from balancer #1 and while I was checking to see the cell #, I got one from balancer #2. Both were for Cell #5. I am Buddy Cell’d so both alarms are for the same pair of cells. They were at 3.75v and I turned the charger off with about 35 watt-hours to go before the charger would have turned off on its own.

I left it set over night. The next morning all cells were between 3.333v and 3.353v at rest.

I then drove for 24 miles and got 57.3mpg. I left the system on more as Banshee08 had suggested and did have one time that I was getting battery only at higher speeds. That was nice but I could not make it happen all the time. I think there is a ICE temperature input into the logic that I am still not yet understanding. Also I ran some at 60-65mph which is why the average was a little lower today. While I was at 7 bars, I got the VSC light again. So the VSC light still seem to have some correlation the high SOC on the Prius HV battery.

So total now it 127 miles at 63.6mpg.

I am out to put a charge on the battery. More later.
Thanks,
Dan

 

Jan 10th 2010
Hello Everyone,
Today I did a 33 mile trip on one charge. The trip was actually 3 sections with more than an hour rest in between. The last section coming home was about 10 miles and took about 20 minutes. No alarms and the green light stayed on the whole way.

When I got home, I left the car turned on and the Enginer system turned on and I still had a green light. I opened the lid and checked the voltages under load by using the balancers. To my surprise I was getting cell voltages as low as 2.5v with a total voltage of 43v to 45v. But no alarms and the green light was still on. I turned off the Enginer kit and immediately. Then I got cell voltages of 3.15v or above and a total of 51v. After 30 minutes resting, the lowest cell is 3.2v

I thought the converter turned off and the green light went out and the red light came on when the total voltage dropped to 46v. I thought I should get a beeping alarm from the balancer if any cell dropped below 2.8v. I am checking with Jack to see what is normal.

I assume I am very close the a full discharge. But I am surprised that I did not get a cell low alarm from any balancer and the converter did not shutdown until I turned it off.

I drove 33 miles and got 70.6 mpg. Thanks to Chan and TheForce for helping me to understand being able to leave the system on for 7 bars. That greatly helped the milage.

So now my total is 160 miles at 65mpg.

So I need to go Charge it up.

Thanks,
Dan Lander

 

Hi Doax,
Thanks for this information. It is good to know that you are seeing the same as I am. Did you ever push a balancer button to see cell voltages while the total voltage was in the 40's. I saw 2.5v but no audible alarm??

Anyway with us both seeing this, maybe it is normal. I would like Jack to explain this. I have Emailed Jack but have not goten an answer yet. Have you emailed this question to Jack? I think he needs to know we are both seeing this.

Thanks,
Dan

 

Jan 11th 2010
Hi Everyone,
I took a drive today and everything went well. Most of it was in town. I did hit 55mph for 2 miles going and coming. After the trip I measured the cells under load. My lowest reading was 2.85v. I will need to see how much charge it takes now.

Mileage was 83.9 mpg for 13 miles.
Total now is 66.5 mpg for 173 miles. I am still a long ways from a full tank of gas but this is getting to be pretty good data. Remember that I was getting 45 mpg before the Enginer Kit.

There is a Temperature hack discussion going in my Gen3 thread, It is not appropriate there because I am not considering that hack for a new car. I would have considered that hack for my 2005 but it looks like I really do not need it.

If I turn on EV before the catalytic converter warm-up starts then I can drive in EV up to 35 mph for as long as I want. If I am going above 35 mph then I need to warm up the ICE anyway. This is all using the EV programming that Toyota puts into the Prius for non USA cars. It works fine for my needs.

I did have the battery monitor go to 8 bars today while I was setting still with the engine off. It then started wasting energy to burn off that charge. So I do need to turn my converter down.

I caution users to not trust the various settings in your kit when you receive it from Enginer but rather double check everything. This is part of the Chinese culture. Mistakes happen. Japanese culture is to catch them all and ship a 100% good product. Chinese culture is to catch what the customer forces you to catch. Then shipping a product with a few defects is considered inevitable.

Thanks,
Dan

 

Jan 12th 2010
Hi Again,
Today I drove 27 miles and got 65.1 mpg.
Now my total is 200 miles at an average of 66.3 mpg.
I drove most of this at 50mph+ on the expressway with several stop lights.

I did my 10th charge.

I have a buddy pair of cells that are always getting full first. I again had to shut down manually. It was suggested to split these 2 cells and pair them differently. I could do that but it is some work to move the cells around. At this point it is more fun to be careful and drive it. If they get worse I may have to do the work.

Jack responded to my discharge question. Here is his response.
If the static voltage is above 3.0V, you should not have to worry about it. Any battery has sag effect in which the voltage drops as discharge current increases. The factory's 2.5V low limit is for static voltage. With 3.1-3.2V static voltage level, the battery still have 30-40% SOC. It shouldn't be an issue.

So it is good to know that my low voltage under load was OK.
Today I measured the load voltage at the end of my drive. It was 23.7v*2 from the balancers and 46.5v on my DVM. So the Balancer voltages are pretty accurate under load.

I feel like I am doing really well on this. The system seems to be repeatable at this point.

Thanks,
Dan

 

Jan 13th 2010
Hi Everyone,
I did my daily trip. I got 67.1 mpg for 24 miles.
So the total is 63.4 mpg for 224 miles.

After my trip, I did a couple of little tweaks to fix some issues. First I think my VSC light was coming from electrical noise from the Enginer kit getting to the ABS power supply that is between the kit and the 12v battery. The Enginer system has a common mode choke on the 240v output. This stops radiated EMI but does not inhibit conducted noise. I changed this to a differential mode choke by changing the directions of the red wire turns. Also my box is not bolted down. This is because I will move this box back into my Gen3 car when I get my next kit. So I think I had an intermittent ground between the box and the ABS module. So I added an good grounding wire. I am hopeful that these two actions will eliminate the intermittent VSC light. We will see.

Next I checked all the cell voltages. The cells that are causing the overcharge alarm are in the top half of the string. The total top half voltage is 26.31v. The bottom half is 26.28v. So they are 30mv apart. In the bottom half, I located the 12v section that had the lowest 2 cell voltages in it. I used a 12v charger to put 2.5 amps into those cells for 5 minutes. This was only 2-3 watt-hours but I am hopeful that it will bring the bottom half up a little so that cell #5 in the top half will not alarm at the end of my regular charging cycle.

I then did a normal charge cycle. I got closer to the end but still did not make it without the alarm. I will try this over again tomorrow. I am thinking that the charger is not changing over to constant voltage mode soon enough. This charge did 2hr20min at constant current of 15.5 amps. But it only did 30 minutes of constant voltage mode. I will ask Jack about this.

Thanks,
Dan

 

Jan 14th 2010
Hello again,
Today I drove 13 miles and got 89.2 mpg. WOW! I even surprised myself. Much of it was in town below 35 mph. And this part that was below 35 mph was all in EV mode. I had time between segments for the Enginer system to do its thing in keeping the Prius at 7 bars. This is the type of driving where the Enginer system works the best.

So my total is 64.8 mpg for 237miles.

After this drive I again charged the bottom half of my battery pack. I did about 18 watt-hours. This was a little too much because later during my regular charge balancer #3 and #4, cells #5 alarmed with 28 watt-hours to go. I had not let the cells balance after my small charge so it may get better after a that balance happens tomorrow.

Balancer #4 had been intermittent. I got a new one from Jack and replaced it today. Now I am seeing #3 giving some false alarms. These are just nuisance alarms because I can un-plug and plug back in the balancer and the problem is gone. I will keep track of it and get another replacement if it continues.

I am gaining confidence that I resolved my VSC light. I have not seen that since I added the good ground wire.

Thanks,
Dan