Featured Why repairing your BEV is so expensive—WSJ

fun & luck ... older modules will have more resistance - & that makes balancing much much more difficult. If we assume all modules' resistance remains equal that may be the case ... but it becomes a crapshoot.
It's more expensive to replace all modules at once - but it guarantees longevity compared to replacing onesies twozies
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A module tends to fail due to imbalance between the cells in that module. When the module is discharged to a low level, a cell with a lower state of charge gets reversed and is destroyed. Balancing an older module before this happens extends the life of that module and improves that module's storage capacity (but not back to the capacity when new). I, and others have successfully refurbished Prius batteries and gotten useful additional life from the refurbished batteries.

JeffD

 

and now is the perfect time to start on the avalon, before they get too far out of balance

 

Speaking of battery packs, somehow I stumbled across THE very best "how-to" video, for toyota traction pack replacement ..... that was not only informative - but pretty darn entertaining, even for someone as attention deficit as yours truly.

Over 4 million views .... that's a lot of mortally wounded Toyota traction packs !
not to mention how much cash you save (plus a way better warranty) by doing it yourself versus service centers.
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I can't seem to be able to find a grid charger for an Avalon hybrid.

I guess I could take all the modules out and wire them up in parallel and charge them with my 6-cell NiMH charger, but I will be out of a car for several days and don't own another running car at the moment.

 

Wouldn't the Avalon just use the same charger as the Camry?

Looks like some of these reconditioning chargers can take several days too.

 

Yes, the same as Camry. I tried Googling both but haven't found one yet. Maybe I'm not spelling something correctly. But I only have been at it 10 minutes or so trying to find one.

 

call prolong and ask. you can also do the modules one at a time with a hobby charger, but ueah, no car for awile.
diesel is sounding better and better

 

I often think that selling my diesel car was a wrong decision.

 

I owned two VW TDIs, NEVER again.

 

Mine wasn't a TDI. It wasn't even turbocharged. Just plane ol' indirect injection non-turbo diesel. Indirect injection uses about half the pump pressure, so the pumps tend to last much, much longer than TDI. There are also no sensors or turbo or just about anything else to go wrong.