First Enginer PHEV install in the Portland Or area, Gen2

Yes, 2kwhr fit well. 4kwhr fit with dificulty. This has been done a couple of times.

Thanks,
Dan

 

Hello Everyone,
I have driven this 2005 Prius with the 4k Enginer system for another three weeks. You can see that my performance is continuing with an average of around 85mpg.

More important is that I have not done any mantainence other than collecting data. The charger continues to stop itself properly and the converter shuts itself down before any cell goes low.

Some people in the southern states are starting to report heating issues with PHEVs (this effrects all battery systems not just the Enginer PHEV). However my system is not having any changes based on the spring warm up.

I still have the top grill 100% blocked and the lower grill about 30% blocked. The ICE temp is still slow to warm up because the ICE is off much of the time when the speeds low. When the speeds are higher (50-60mph) the radiator is working fine with the grill blocking. I assume this is because of the Ram air effect from the speed.

I am very pleased with this system. My only regret is that I do not drive it as much as it could be driven because it is our second car. I guess I could sell this car, but I am not sure what would be better for me for a replacement.

Thanks,
Dan

 

Hi Flan,
The 'Electric miles" is a calculated number. I take the actual miles driven and the difference in mpg and calculate what portion of those miles came from gas and what came from the electric grid. So if I had run the pack to empty (not done on every drive) then this is an indication of the range of the pack.

Balancing is a slow process with any balancer. If a pack is way out of balance, I can manually balance quicker using CellLog data. In that case I am afraid I would not have enough patience to wait on the balancer to give me system improvement. That is just my personal problem.

Anyway, the systems from Enginer come from the factory in good balance. I am confident that the BMS16C would give the same results on a new system from the factory. I just do not have the opportunity to get that data.

The problem in the past was that the old DB8 balancers were undersized to the point that they got hot and some then had internal damage to the point that they would unbalance a pack of cells. In my case when I saw this, I unplugged the DB8s and manually balanced.

Thanks,
Dan

 

Hello Everyone,
Today I got 80.5mpg for 51 miles. This is the longest range that I have gotten from the 4kwhr batteries. I get the feeling that the battery pack is still improving a little. These cells are now about 6 months old and probubly have 100 cycles on them.

Thanks,
Dan

 

Hi Phil,
This car is my 2005 Gen2. I have two cars with two separate threads. The thread for the 2010 Gen3 is in the Gen3 forum. Yes, on the 2010, I have the top open and the bottom 75% blocked.

Thanks,
Dan

 

Hello Everyone,
This 2005 Prius with the older 4kwhr Enginer system is still running great. I do now see sometimes that the heat of summer can cause the car to not like EV sometimes, but the Enginer system is not being effected by the summer heat.

Note that I am still running this car with no balancers. I had added a second charger that boosted the highest charge voltage for the pack from 56v up to 58v. With this higher charge I did need to manually balance a little by taking some power out of 2 cells that were a little higher. They had gone higher before knew that the CellLogs needed to have a mod done to pull power evenly from all 8 cells.

Thanks,
Dan

 

Hi Kaminsky,
I think this question is posted in the wrong thread. The Batteries talked about in this thead are much different than what you are discussing.

Goto..
http://priuschat.com/forums/generat...will-p3030-trigger-p3000-code-2001-prius.html
or do a search on your codes.

Thanks,
Dan

 

Hi Everyone,
I wanted to let you know that this car is still running great. Today I took it to visit a friend and get a cup of coffee. I got 96.7mpg for 27 miles this is according to the Prius display so it is a little high but it is still way, way better than the 45mpg I was getting before the Enginer install.

I do not drive this car much, I should probably sell it. Does anyone know what I should ask for a 2005 with a 4kwhr Enginer system installed?

Thanks,
Dan

 

Hi MJFrog,
I have 65k miles. I do not know the packages, but I have SKS but no GPS or back-up cammera. I does have a Washington state rebuilt title. It had the front damages and rebuilt many years ago. There is no edvidence of this except the note on the title.

Vancouver Wa. is just across the river from Portland Or.

Thanks,
Dan

 

Hello Everyone,
This car is running great.

I am still averaging 85mpg on in town driving.

This car has an old 4kwhr system in it. I had done "balancing at the bottom" and "capacity matching" on this battery pack. I have been driving it for many months with CellLogs and alarms but no balancers. It has run with no need to do anything to the battery pack.

The old charger was set to turn off at 55.6v and I had a new charger that charges up to 58.2v. So I put the newer charger in and had a couple of charging alarms at the higher voltage. So then I temporarily put in a BMS16C to balance at the top. I soon came to the realization that a significant part of the balancing process in the newer systems is the overcharge protection in the newer MottCells.

So, if you are upgrading an older system with the BMS16C, you really should put in a newer charger and the newer Mottcells.

I am still working through optimizing the balance with the 58.2v charger. I will post more as I have data to help me understand how things are interacting.

Thanks,
Dan Lander

 

Hello Everyone,
Another month and the car and Enginer system are still running great. It is still reliable with no tweeking of the enginer system. I do need to add some grill blocking.

Thanks,
Dan