Hybrid & Aux Battery Problems

This should keep some of you busy: http://d26maze4pb6to3.cloudfront.net/9613/4997/8047/Optima_Consumer_Warranty_101112.pdf

 

Well I suppose they can create any parameters they want in so much as defining abuse or neglect. BUT...
I still say BS. A good healthy battery that isn't the victim of some parasitic problem SHOULD be fine with only 2-3 hours a week operation.

I have a short commute to work, and IF I have a shut in weekend or two? I can easily go weeks where I doubt I'm putting even 2-3 hours total drive time on my Prius. Admittedly if I do this 2-3 weekends in a row, I'll actually plan a modest road trip, just to purposely put some miles and time on my Prius....and I like to drive. But there are people that infrequently drive, and/or store their Prius for extended time frames and everything turns out OK.

I think the real problem here, is we are not sure exactly what your problem may be. Usually the Cart/Horse chant within Prius Chat is 1st Check your 12 volt...then check everything else.

But in your case? If your HV battery is dying? Or you have some other parasitic drain on either 12 volt or Hybrid? Well you might just have a bigger problem that is creating the symptom of 12 volt failure instead of the often usual, 12 volt failure causing the ghost symptoms of other failures.

Personally, I think it IS getting complicated. Too bad you're not getting any support from eLearnAid but at this point I'm going to say something relatively rare in Prius Chat, and that's stop worrying about the 12 volt battery, (Even if you do need another)...and go try to find out what the Big Picture might be.

You could replace the 12 volt again....but my totally uneducated gut instinct feels you have a bigger problem. In this case I think the 12 volt is the symptom of the bigger disease, not the disease causing the symptoms.

But I could be wrong. I'll watch the thread with interest, keep us updated.

 

I think the 12V battery is going bad. If the battery had a temporary internal short the inverter 12V charger would have to work really hard pulling down the fuel mileage. Once the voltage went below 9 volts the ECU computer would have had fits and turned on all the dash lights. Even the triangle of death!

If you can charge the battery up (2 amps for 24 hours) and it holds a charge for another 24 hours at 12.9 volts then it may be "good".

Run the car for a while. It would be good to have a "Jump start" battery on hand in the car. That way if the 12V battery goes out again, just unhook the ground connection of the 12V battery and clip on the red cable jump start to the battery + 12V post to drive home. It is a pain to uncover the + 12 connector cover, I couldn't find the clips to easily remove it.
Clip the black ground cable on the chassis stud the ground cable came off from. By unhooking the battery ground cable that keeps a bad battery from draining the jump start battery. It also preserves the condition of the original battery for further inspection.

I always have a small DVM (digital volt-ohm meter) in my car. It makes it easy to check the 12 V battery

 

This is Bernie from eLearnaid.
1. the Optima battery "warranty is to the original purchaser that the battery is free of defects in material and workmanship for the time period indicated"; Johnson Control.

The Prius has an high voltage DC to 14 volt DC converter. It only puts out around 14 volts and so many amps and the battery only gets what is left over from every other draw on in the Prius.
The 2004 Prius without smart key or nav drains 11.1 millionth of a amp (Thanks Hobbit) with Smart key it is a lot more. 11.1 may sound like nothing but * 24 hours * 7 days = 1.848 amp hours a week. But there are other drains, a motor for brake pressure, locking the car, security going to quiet, security alerts etc. Plus the drain of bringing up all the computers and powering up everything left on. Still if he does not have Smart Key 3 hours of driving might have been enough. This also assume he has never left lights on etc. If he does have smart key 3 hours a week driving is very marginal.
If you draw is larger than your charge no battery will work. The solution is to hook up a charger once a month and after any serious drain.

Where Absorbed glass mat (AGM) batteries shines is they very tightly packed. Lead acid batteries have a lead plate, sulfuric acid and a lead oxide plate. With AGM the acid is in a glass mat. so it is a tight sandwich. When a lead acid battery is discharged the lead and sulfur combine into crystals. As this occurs the battery looses capacity with a tightly packed battery there is not enough room to grow large lead-sulfur crystals. When you charge a battery the crystal tend to break down for Optima at 10 amps you can do a pretty good job. Some charges will put out a wave from designed to break up the crystal but the will only do this if the batery is disconnected from the car to prevent damage to the cars electronics.

Also deep discharge batteries have thicker lead plates so they can hold up to more deep discharges. The Optima Yellow top is a deep discharge battery.

When charging sealed batteries (AGM & Gel) the charger must lower the rate of charge as the battery charges or the battery will overcharge, gas and be ruined. Most newer computer controlled chargers handle this quite well.

 

This has being over 3years ago! I hope the OP would still be driving that Prius!

 

why is the price so high?

do they make one for gen4?