Gen II Prius Individual Battery Module Replacement

Update on our 07 Prius, we went back and cleaned all the bus bars and nuts, using electrolysis and elbow grease, battery no longer throws codes (been an hour now), but we now have P0A94-548 that came on immediately after the first reset. Am in my driveway trying to see if it returns, converter temp seems to be fine, shows 124 degrees. We went through all the modules with a DVM prior to restart, 7.99-8.04v across the board.

Update #2. Has been 2 hours, code has not returned, all systems are good! Looks like slightly dirty bus bars caused all of the problems after going through the pack. One word of advice, forget the Reaktor 250w models, I tried a couple and they are NiMH impaired, like the B6 chargers are. The Hobbyking Quattro works well though, just not nearly as fast as a Reaktor 300w. The 07 is back on the road, now I'm going through my 06 pack. Thanks again to everyone who contributes to this thread, and this site, show me where to sign up for sponsorship!

Update #3. The Reaktor 250w units are working fine, apparently they did not like my $5 Chinese made, eBay leads.

Tj

 

Hello all. I've been working my way through this thread and others working on my first rebuild.

After many days running a single Hitec X4 i've balanced the modules and come up with the following:



Advice on how I should re-stack the pack? Is it an issue that the module I replaced (#22) has significantly higher capacity than any others I could pair it with? I highlighted the suspect packs in yellow. The others seemed to charge up predictably.

I currently have the pack wired in parallel to balance voltages. In my intro thread where I posted this information earlier I was told that doing this would have no real effect. But the initial reading I've done seems to show this as being an important step.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Cheers!

-Steve

 

Steve, why did you limit your charger to 7250?

Tj

 

It seemed to be in the middle of some different cut off's I've seen. Think 7500 is the better bet?

 

I think most people limit charge to either 7250 or 7500 as a safety net just incase toy charger does not detect dV on time causing overcharge and terminal failure of the module (violin noises) seeing the modules have only been discharged to 6v you wouldn't want or need to go much more anyway

 

I had to set mine to 7500, or it would shut off before reaching the batteries potential. I did have one module that went to 7700, but it was a much newer module from eBay.

 

hi there, is your car going ok now? no more codes..
what did you find happening the most dV detection or the 7500 limit ?

 

Our 07 is running great, no codes and no weird transmission or inverter issues. When we tore the battery pack out the second time, we detail cleaned the bus bars, nuts, and battery posts. After reassembly, the HV codes went away, and it threw one code about the inverter, that has not returned in roughly 300 miles of mixed driving. We are now going through an older pack, for my 06 Prius, and so far have found at least 3 modules that will not rise above 1500mah, even after 5 to 8 deep cycles on the Reaktor chargers. I bought another complete pack off of Craigslist for $300, from a wrecked 2007, so my plan is to take the best modules from both packs, and sell the rest of the good ones on eBay. With the exception of one module, all of them have hit DV before capacity limits, and I have it set to 7500 on all of the chargers. How is yours coming along?

 

Sounds like it really tested your patience but great to hear you finally got it sorted, do they usually get past 7250?

My car is going great so far, really pleased with it.. Much like yourself I still have another car to do but its still running for now so no rush

 

So when putting this back after replacing a module my uncle apparently didn't tighten ALL of the bolts. One of them was lose and did this.. So the question for everyone is how screwed am I? I feel like maybe I can clean the bus bars..but I honestly don't know. I heard someone's pack caught fire but couldn't find the thread. Any suggestions?

 

Inspect the loom and modules thoroughly.
If they are not up to par, replace them. If you have the slightest doubt replace them.

Risking your life is not worth trying to save a couple hundred bucks.

Yes, there was a recent smoke /fire incident reported on the forum. Could be from driving on damaged modules.

 

man that's just totally hopeless! like I said in the other thread slow down a little, educate yourself before you mess around with it, this is dangerous practice you could hurt/KILL yourself or burn your car

Looks like those buss bars are all green n dirty how much extra effort would it have taken you to give them a little cleanup

I don't know what to recommend but your suggestion to clean the buss bars and tighten everything PROPERLY seems reasonable enough providing you can get the outer insulators on those buss bars

good luck

 

Well I'll scrub em up and see if I trust it. I'll post pics after everything is scraped and cleaned before I put it all back. If anyone thinks it's a bad idea, then I'll scrap it and get new stuff. How insulated does it need to be? Because the plastic melted, but it's still covering everything it needs to be covering, it just doesn't look pretty... Not sure how important the plastic is other than to stop the metal from touching other metal that it shouldn't be touching, right?

No need to judge. Maybe I liked them green And if I had done the swap ALONE that nut would have been tightened, and I wouldn't even have this issue. I believe the saying goes, "If you want something done right, do it yourself." I'll never make that mistake again. Now I just have to fix it.

Thanks for the brainstorm.

 

pff lol bob buy a fire extinguisher to keep in your car good luck with it

 

No kidding!

 

Lucky. I had one explode on me!

 

I found a wire harness on Ebay for 25 bucks, and picked up 2 modules for 30 a piece. After shipping it was like 115. Not as bad as I expected, but still more money. The modules are melted enough that the terminals have a gap in them just big enough that it worries me about leaking or something worse.. So anyway I'll just replace the two modules and the bus bar and re-balance the pack with my HA Reconditioning pack. Thanks for the help, and sorry to hear about your pack exploding Dvizzy! Did it cause any damage to the modules next to it?

 

I have had many go past 7250, and about half a dozen or so, go past 7500.

Tj

 

Ok guys so i have an 06 gen 2 prius that I had sitting for over 6 months, I took out the hybrid battery in hopes of swapping out the bad cell and 6 months later 1 finally did it, I didn't realize it would be so easy to do, Honestly I was scared to diy it and considered just buying a refurb unit.
I didn't do any charging, I just installed the battery and tried to fire it up, the engine will not kick on at all, ibelieve the cells are at about 7.2 from sitting for so long . Will this be the reason for engine not starting?
I had gotten the red triangle along with all the dash lights, vsc, abs, brake etcand dealer had also told me the skid control module was bad, I found a used one and have installed it .

I hooked up to techstream and tried to clear all the codes but when i do the center screen flickers and a beep is heard and "error" in red shows up in the upper left corner of the screen

Any help would be greatly appreciated

 

Get the 12 volt battery charged at your local auto parts store and go from there

SAMSUNG-SM-N900A ?