A $10 vs $4000 Battery Repair Camry Hybrid

This is a typical overblown quantity one anecdote.

You have a choice of walking down a diagnostic flow chart of what could be wrong at $100+ an hour or throwing parts at the problem. Guess what most mechanics will do? Especially if someone else is paying for the part.

Imagine you walking into the shop and the service advisor gives you a choice:

1. I can walk the diagnostic path and it may take me 4 or 5 hours before I come to the right cause. And even at that point, there could be a second failure lurking. And when I get there the cause could still be an expensive part. By the way, you'll have to wait till tomorrow for your car because only my expert mechanic is qualified to do that kind of diagnosis..

2. I can follow the most probable failure path and swap out the most probable part. You'll be out of here in an hour. My medium skilled techs can handle this.

Which choice would you take if the car was in warranty? Out of warranty? Why should the dealer/manufacturer not do the same?

 

Is the Camry Hybrid, like my Prius, designed so that if you open the right rear door too soon after a rain, water runs off the roof straight into the air intake for battery cooling?

 

Checking to see if the terminals are coroded and if a battery takes a charge is the normal procedure from an independant shop for a 12V battery. Why should the dealership follow decent procedures for a more expensive traction battery? I guess they don't have to, they make more money even under waranty for replacing good parts, but that is why dealership mechanics have such a bad reputation.

Why shouldn't a dealership ignore driver complaints? I mean its the auto manufacturer that has to pay the fines.

Well its the decent thing to do. Not all businesses should be staffed by incompetents or people trying to sell you something you don't need.

 

i think it's more complicated than that. manufacturers have to control warranty costs, so they set up methods for dealers to do repairs. to let them have more leeway could be opening a can of worms. independent shoppes have no one beholden to, and come in many different flavors.

no, the hycam channels the water off and to the side. i don't know why they can't accomplish this on the prius, but it probably has something to do with wind tunnel design.

 

About corrosion, the electrolye is a nearly saturated KOH solution, very corrosive. During normal charging, a small amount of H{2}, O{2}, and heat is generated. This is later converted back to water. But if a large number of charging cycles happen in warm climates, the pressure builds up and a small amount 'seeps' out the heat weakened terminal "O" ring on to the copper buss bars. KOH eats copper and organic stuff like fingers.

Bob Wilson

 

thank you bob. the warm/cold climate thing is always important. and just like the model year and mileage, location is missing as well. and so, should warm climate dealers be trained differently?

 

I would think the mechanics would be trained to test for corrosion on 12V batteries and traction packs. It really isn't that hard. I have no idea why they would not do it in cold climates as well. People can spill things in the vents. But if you can sell a new traction battery .... (note toyota pays the dealership for warranty work)

 

yup, there's that too. what would tesla do?

 

It really comes down to the driving profile. Minimize traction battery discharge and even in Arizona and New Mexico mountains in summer, no problem. But lead-footed in West By-Gosh and you need to start a traction battery fund.

Bob Wilson

 

Tesla On Top In Consumer Reports Repair Satisfaction Survey - Gas 2

Then again Tesla can eat extra costs as share holders are looking at revenue growth not profits. Its harder for toyota, but that does not excuse toyota dealerships from scoring poorly. They know how to train mechanics, their lexus franchise does better.

 

Well they don't use NiMH batteries!

Bob Wilson

 

it would be great to have access to the black box info when buying a pre owned alternate fuel vehicle.

are the pip lithium less likely to corrode?

 

There is the question of how accessible the bus bars are? As a wear item, the 12 volt is quite accessible.

 

I'm not watching it, but from the length it appears to be quite a process. That likely means I need to remove my a&&hole comments. oops. We have no idea if the stealership would have replaced the battery. They probably would not have inspected it until the customer gave the go ahead to replace it. They may have gotten to the battery and noticed that it was corroded and tested it before replacing. We have no way of knowing.

 

The NiMH chemistry requires KOH. The LiON cells use a non-water based electrolyte. Bad news is when an LiON is compromised. Water is the wrong thing to handle the fire.

Bob Wilson

 

Man Fixes Camry's Hybrid Battery Pack Himself for $10; Toyota Wanted $4,456!

Long story short, Toyota dealer wanted $4,600 to replace a failed battery pack. The owner took it apart, tested the batteries, and cleaned the connectors.

"There was nothing really wrong with the pack itself, as scoodidabop discovered when he began taking it apart (he says he’s a seasoned electrician with experience in hybrid batteries, recommends you don’t try this unless you know what you’re doing and take required precautions).

All that needed doing was to freshen up its copper connectors, as they were heavily corroded. None of the actual cells had any problems, all showed normal voltage when tested."

 

There was a post and link to a different presentation of this story a few days back.

I didn't like the tone of the other article as I think it was unnecessarily "anti-hybrid". This one I think is a better presentation, there is less spin to it.

I'm glad for the guy, that he could fix his problem.

And I think perhaps Toyota has to look at this happening and add another step to their diagnosis process. Perhaps they are relying too heavily on just CODE=REPLACEMENT...when evidently conditions can manifest that produce a false code.

 

I stuck the link to the guy's post on the battery repair.

There might be another step the technician is trained in, but it is just that the bus bars the guy replaced can't be gotten to until the entire battery is pulled out. Which is also true of testing individual cells. Considering the typical labor rate, the diagnosing will become pricy, and it still might be the battery. Unless you have a shop that is willing to pull the battery out and look at it for free or low cost, it is likely cheaper in the end to the non-DIY inclined to just replace battery.

 

On the contrary, I tend to run our battery right down to two bars, every time I'm in a low speed, light to moderate load situation. Running up through the levels in a parking garage for example: discharges the the battery without fail, at the low speeds I can't get the engine to kick in, and the unrelenting upgrade eats the charge fast.

 

i know the pain. i learned to park on the first floor and walk stairs, win-win.