What Did You Do To Your Gen II Today?

Installed a 34 inch LED light bar behind the billet lower grille:
Wired up to the factory fogs through a 40 amp relay. Stupid bright, now I can see the kamikaze rabbits in the morning.

 

put ice blue led bulbs in my fog lights; much brighter than the oem bulbs. we'll see if they start strobeing or simply quit in a few weeks like all the cheap ebay bulbs usually do.

 

So this happened today...

 

Nice! I'd be tempted to add window deflectors, plus remove the poor excuse for rear windee-wiper! (just the arm/blade so that it can easily be re-installed for annual state-inspection) ...just sayin'

 

Didn't do it myself, but got the windows tinted this morning.

 

looking good! now de-badge the hatch.

 

Looks nice! What percentage tint is this?

 

Already planning on it

40% front, 15% rear.

 

Recently passed 150,000 miles, and roughly 1000 miles ago, I was suffering from severe problems that many might've suggested was battery failure.

In the end - I found out that whoever most recently serviced my car and cleaned the fan forgot to plug in the battery fan. The pack overheated after 40 mins of driving and the computers slowly reducing its use - to the point the car couldn't accelerate right or overtake at all. It caused all kinds of lights and problems and eventually hazardous driving.

Now, lights are gone, drive quality is improved and average consumption has improved up by ~10 mpg, and that's with spirited/busy driving quite often with passengers and stuff. On my own, I could get up to 80 mpg on some journeys.. It's also pulling in EV mode in places I never thought possible.

 

I took 8 years and 100,000 miles off my wife's battery. Yesterday I replaced the traction battery in my wife's '07 with the cells from a '15 with 18,000 miles. Todd at @TampaPrius.com had put the cells and other parts into a gen 2 battery case and I did the battery swap in a few hours. Reason was a bad cell in the old battery and lots of corrosion throughout making and individual cell replacement look like a low possibility of long term success. This setup gives me all "new" cells that were out of the same battery. The car is amazing now! I took it for a 30 minute test drive this morning. Some 55 mph, some stop and go, some 50 mph steady, some 30 mph residential. I'm a happy camper now!

 

That sounds like exactly what I'd like to do. I've heard that it's a possibility. Is this a normal Toyota dealer job? How long was the car down for? Was there a ballpark to the price? Did you obtain the batteries, or did the dealer find them for you? Did you post up the process in a thread here, or just this post? Thanks for letting us know how to extend the life of the Prius!

 

No corporate Toyota dealer would ever do something like this, though I did read about one installing a Dorman battery once

Everything was handled by Todd ( @TampaPrius.com ) aka Home - Tampa Hybrids Inc.

Here is the thread : Augh!! P3000, P0A80, P3021, C1259 on an '07 | PriusChat

 

Thanks, SFO. You beat me to it. If you check Todd's web site, you'll see that he specializes in Prius and also is branching into others now as well as battery only like the 1st gen Leaf. Todd also buys totaled cars and makes them available for repairs if someone doesn't way to buy new parts.

We've probably all seen threads here about members replacing cells only to have other cells fail soon afterward. Or maybe even the "new" cell because it isn't really new or because it's not a good enough match to the others. Todd found that, on top of that, there is often a lot of corrosion in the battery wires and crimp connectors. Both the current carrying wires and the communication wires turn black WAY back under the insulation and inside the crimp connectors. So he sells replacement wiring harnesses too.

And he has started taking all the cells out of totaled Gen 3 cars and retrofitting them to the battery cases for Gen 2. He sells the whole thing ready to put in your car, or he'll do it for you. How much it costs will depend on how new you want the cells to be and how much work you want to do yourself. You can get one with cells from a '15, a '14, and so on. His phone number is on the web site SFO gave you if you want to call him.

I've accessed the battery before when installing Prolong grid chargers, so I'm pretty quick at getting to it. I was a little more deliberate when it came to actually taking it out since this is dealing with some potentially dangerous voltages. The only hard part is actually horsing it out the back of the car. Easier with two people. I got it out myself, but I'm fairly strong for an old fart and I laid a piece of plywood over the spare tire well to make it easier and protect the wires I'd have to move it over. Here are links to three videos (parts 1, 2, & 3) showing how to replace the battery. The videos and the tear down manual I used show to remove the rear seat bench. I don't know why. I just removed the seat backs and had no problems at all. Maybe that's just to keep the seat clean?

 

Day before yesterday- Had the 120k service done, new serpentine belt and 12v battery installed. Turns out trans fluid WAS changed at 90k before we bought the car so I skipped that.

Today- had the wiring harness for the Prolong battery conditioning system installed. I'll start the actual conditioning process a week from Monday (on the 12th).

 

Yesterday I gave my prius a little cosmetic face lift. I finally situated some 4 sided LED bulbs in the headlight. Still need to do some fine tuning because the headlight assemblies are aftermarket and have an extra adjustment not on the OEM ones. I put in the brightest lumen LEDs in my fog lights I still don't think they are bright enough. BUT after all the screwing around putting aftermarket fogs into an aftermarket bumper I am done for now. I put a shinny bolt on billet on, and a hood protector. Now I am looking to do inverter, transmission and radiator flush because I don't know what has been done before I got it with 188,000. Now it has 237,000. I included a few pics.

 

The paint on my rear door handles were cracking/fading so I decided to install some chrome covers. Fitment isn't perfect, but can't complain for $13 on ebay. I added some additional 3m tape for reinforcement so they don't come flying off on the road.

 

Did an oil change and tire rotation over the weekend. Pulled off my rear badges on lunch today (cause it's that hot lol), just need to use some adhesive remover when I get home to get the rest of the old tape off.

Now I count the days until this heat wave is over, so I can install the Rear Sway Bar, Front Strut Bar and Midbrace I got from Justdidit's for sale post. Also need to check the HV Fan, to see if it needs cleaning since I've never done it since I got the car and have no idea what the previous owner used to transport lol.

 

I found a rodents nest next to the hv battery when I cleaned my fan. you might want to check it soon.

 

Those actually look really nice on your car! I'm not a big chrome fan, but it flows well

 

Thanks! I'm not a chrome fan either, but didn't think it would stand out too much on a silver car. I was thinking of getting the black chrome ones, but couldn't find any that had 2 front handles with smart key button holes. Someone should make some pre-painted covers for these cars as the fading/cracking seems common.