Red Triangle! Any thoughts?

Hello Daniel

Yes, the kit has regular spring-loaded clamps like a battery charger. I find the clamps easy enough to use for something infrequently driven, like the tractor or the old Ford truck. Both are kept in a shed, so they are out of the weather

The kit also comes with a harness that has large ring terminals. I'm pretty sure the VDC site has a photo of what comes with the kit. The ring terminals I wired directly to the battery. I made a Acrobat pdf of the photos I took of the harness.

Note, I removed the black plastic sleeve from the harness so it would be easier to see. I put on the plastic wiring sleeve to protect the harness.

Normally, the harness connector stays inside the hatch. Otherwise I open the hatch, the harness is just long enough to poke out a couple of inches. I then plug the actual Battery Minder harness into the battery

If the vehicle has to sit outside all the time, this becomes complicated. The Battery Minder isn't recommended to be used outdoors, so you would probably have to wire it under the hood and use an extension cord to the unit, with the cord hanging out the grille. Like plugging in a block heater

jay

 

Daniel

I guess the only thing I find disturbing about your "adventure" is that certain wiring problems can cause severe, possibly fatal, operating issues.

With the CANBus, ProfiBus, Foundation FieldBus industrial systems I'm familiar with, there is extensive short/open protection. For example, say a batch reactor with numerous level, temp, ORP sensors, in addition to valving control and HX PID feedback

Back when we did everything with discrete wiring (4-20 mA) if one device went on the fritz, nothing else was directly impacted. If you had to, you would get the operator to enter "last known good" values to keep the batch going. The only PITA, and it was a royal one too, was all that discrete wiring. What a jungle

With modern networked systems, such as the most popular Foundation FieldBus, everything at the batch reactor would plug into a single junction block. I spec the ones from Turck

The Turck blocks provide PER PORT short/open protection. Say a forklift truck happens to hit the armor cable from a temp transmitter and crushes the conduit, creating a short. The Turck block will isolate that port, protecting the rest of the networked system from a catastrophic outtage

Turck benefited from a lot of early military contracts that had requirements for that level of system reliability. It took +20 years for that technology to trickle down to industrial use

So my worst-case scenario is this: a mouse is happily chewing away on wiring under the dash, next day you hop in, press Start, and ... nothing

 

Daniel

That is a good point. However, as the Prius fleet ages, there will be changes to electrical resistance in the wiring harness. Not sure if you have ever worked on old cars, or restored them, but once a wiring harness is +15 years old, it tends to become very brittle and easily damaged

If the car or truck is a popular vintage, such as a 1967-1972 Chevy pickup, then it's easier and cheaper to just order a new wiring harness from a place like Painless Performance.

However, most of the older fleet will not have easily available wiring harness kits available. The other option is to visit the boneyard, which really isn't an option as the wiring in a junked vehicle is perhaps worse than what you are trying to repair

For me, the least desirable option is to just put in new wiring one wire at a time. I have a 1984 Ford pickup as the work vehicle at my hobby farm. Despite being in mechanically excellent condition, the wiring is literally falling apart. A few of the gauges have already stopped working, and I had to wire the heater blower manually

It takes a huge amount of time and effort to wire a harness one wire at a time, and I'm not that patient. Notice that the wiring I repaired didn't have terribly picky resistance requirements

Modern vehicles with sophisticated bus systems actually are very picky to resistance changes, as you discovered. I'm disappointed that no effort was made to protect some systems from shorts and opens, as is common with industrial control networks

This critique also applies to the aviation industry. It's pretty easy to find row after row of retired military and civillian aircraft at Davis Monthan AFB, near Tucson AZ. Another is Pinal Airpark, which is near Davis Monthan AFB

A lot of folks may not realize that with older military and civillian aircraft, wiring may be the cause of early retirement. It's virtually impossible to replace wiring in aircraft, unless you take the entire airframe apart, so it's cheaper to just park the airframe and order a new plane

The wiring insulation responsible for a lot of retirement was a product called Kapton, which has been implicated in onboard fires. The most famous such incident was the Swiss Air MD-11 that crashed off Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia

Kapton Wiring: The Silent Menace

The TWA 800 crash is still shrouded in mystery. However, the center fuel tank explosion has been attributed to wiring problems, as an investigation of similar vintage 747's has uncoved issues with the Kapton wiring

 

Daniel

I'm unsure if the THHT or newer dealership Panasonic ToughBook tester can actually measure bus resistance values. A dedicated MSO (Mixed Signal Oscilloscope) is very much capable of detecting signal glitches. We use this model Agilent 6000 for a wide variety of industrial, commercial, avionics, and military testing regimes:

http://cp.literature.agilent.com/litweb/pdf/5989-5049EN.pdf

We also use this series of Agilent scope for dedicated comms and military test regimes

Agilent | N1955B Physical Layer Test System

As I'm sure you're well aware, a scope priced $40,000-$170,000 plus the expensive test options, is far beyond the reach of individuals and dealerships. However, I'm also aware that only the above mentioned scopes - or similar models from LeCroy, Amplifier Research, etc - are capable of detecting such anomolies in a digital bus

Of course, that would be bad for the economy if everybody stopped buying new cars every 3-5 years. If the driver isn't mechanically inclined, and now electronically inclined, once problems surface, the car is usually dumped

What I find scandalous, and borderline criminal, is that at the same time the DOD began to phase out Kapton wiring in their order cycles, the civillian airliners started using it

A lot of folks think a civillian airliner is subject to far gentler living than a military jet. True enough the civillian airliner usually isn't shot at or subject to intentional EMI

However, civillian airliners will experience far greater lifecycle useage and takeoff/landing. These are called "cycles" and civvie airliners are subject to far greater cycles, in a shorter time, than military equipment

So next time you're all relaxed in your first/biz class seat, wondering what they have on the inflight entertainment, maybe consider if Kapton was used to wire the trendy inflight entertainment system.

Oh, did I also mention that the "flame proof" insulation widely used up until the late 1980's actually fails the *new* flame spread test?

jay

 

Daniel

Ironically your troubleshooting appeared to be better than the "mechanic."

Nothing in life is Zero risk. Just being alive carries Risk, the alternative is not being alive

As I have spent the majority of my professional career in risk mitigation, and the remediation from unwise risk policies, I tend to view things a bit differently than most civillians

When I consider risk analysis, such as highly specialized FMECA and DMECA, or CMM for software, one reaches a point where slight risk reduction can carry enormous cost.

As an example, say you design a machine that is 94% "reliable" but it must be used in a critical process. By "critical" I mean the failure of the machine may result in an explosion and release of toxic gasses, and unfortunately that machine is a key component so is a single mode failure waiting to happen

Ideally, the machine should be 100% reliable. By definition, that is *impossible* so we have to engineer the machine to be "as reliable as possible"

To go from 94% reliable to 95% reliable might add 10% to the cost of the machine. To go from 95% reliable to 96% reliable adds another 20% to the cost of the machine. From 96% to 97% adds 50% cost.

Let's face it, if the FSM determines our time is up, our time is up. No amount of statistical analysis will prevent that. Of course, I'm one of those weird folks who like mathematics, so I'll keep it up until I kick

 

In the olden days, the Dealer would replace the relevant ECU. There is/was a TSB on it.

 

Perhaps not. A similar issue could have been caused by chaffed wiring, a mouse nibbling on the wiring, etc. Wiring issues are among the most difficult to diagnose, as they are intermittent.

Few technicians are willing to sit there watching a display while they jiggle around wiring bundles. With the proper MSO plugged in, one can watch for *very* short duration glitches.

Again, although your issue was in all liklihood caused by an aftermarket gadget, a similar issue could have been caused by an actual wiring problem

Of course I'm joking. As an athiest, I have no belief or illusion about magical friends in the sky that promise to reduce our suffering, or make us wealthy, or deliver us +50 virgins, whatever. Oh, and there is *no* Easter Bunny, Santy Clause, Tooth Fairy, etc

That's why I embraced mathematics at such an early age. I think it's instinctive for us to try to create order out of chaos. With math, you eventually reach the conclusion that "order" is - at best - a nice delusion to have in your own home

You want to achieve things in life, you have two choices: become a criminal or work your nice person off. I picked option #2, and it took around 23 years for it to pay off

Of course, I was just engaging in good natured ribbing. There are many things we have no control over, so at best we can only have incidental involvement