buy a new hv battery from toyota or rebuild with newer cells for 2003

I have a 2003 Prius with 189000 miles and the orignal HV battery.
I wanted to know if anyone knows if a new battery from toyota is new or if it is just old stock that was made in 2003 and been sitting on a self somewhere for years.
If it is not fresh then I think it would be an old unused battery. In this case would it be better to rebuild my battery with the newer used 2006-2008 cells?
I am torn between buying a $2300 from Toyota or buying newer used cells and rebuilding my battery for about $1500.
I could buy a rebuilt battery with newer cells but the core and shipping cost are expensive.

I would like to hear others ideas on this and your soulitions.

I ordered a rebuilt battery and when it arrived it was damaged during shipping so I am now thinking what to do now. I Have not accepted the shipment yet. I have 3 days to do so. I could accept the battery and rebuild it using my case and get a discount from supplier or have it sent back and get a Full refund and start all over again.

I have dissambeled my current battery and check all the cells and load check them and they all check good. The car runs great and gets close to 50 mpg still. The problem is that I am getting codes P3000 amd P3009. P3009 is a HV leak and I have had a dealer check out the car (4 hours) and they said that I need a new HV battery. The batterise are good but they could be leaking enough voltage to set the code. I have ohmed out all tha HV cables and they check good. The problem could be within the HV case. I have cleaned all the buss bars anc cleaned everythinge with acetone. The Hybrid lights only comes on every say 100 miles or so and will go off by itself if you keep driving.

 

Thanks for the responses
I ohmed the HV cables from the battery to the inverter, between the shield and center, and center io ground. they test ok, and I have done a visual check for any damage and I see none. I do not have a megger to test to do the high voltage leak test. The dealer troubleshot the car for 4 hours and told me I needed the HV battery replaced. I do not trust them. That is why I took the battery out and load check and voltage checked the indivisual cells. If i rember correctly all cells were between 7.6 to 7.8 volts.
Also 85% or more of the time the dash warning lights are off, the hybrid light will sometimes come on and also the PS light but never the battery light. Any time the lights come on you cannot tell any differance in performance or milage while driving the car. The lights will go off after a few times of cranking the car.

 

In addition to the code, a leak from battery-to-case will over time, unbalance the modules.

I choose to upgrade my battery in November 2009 from NHW11 to NHW20 modules to gain the advantage of thicker terminal seals and lower internal resistance. The swap did not increase my mileage as much as give me peace of mind that the traction battery is as resistant to thermal problems as it can be.

Bob Wilson[/quote]

In addition to the code, a leak from battery-to-case will over time, unbalance the modules.

I choose to upgrade my battery in November 2009 from NHW11 to NHW20 modules to gain the advantage of thicker terminal seals and lower internal resistance. The swap did not increase my mileage as much as give me peace of mind that the traction battery is as resistant to thermal problems as it can be.

Bob Wilson[/quote]

Here some pictures.


I could make the repairs but the bottom of the case is curved upward and if i accepted the shipment and it had any cracked cells I would be stuck with it or the cost of shipping it back.
I am thinking like you, this was built with the 2006-2008 newer cells. Better quality and better venlation.
I talked with the Toyota dealer today and was told the price of the HV battery is $2299 with a $1350 core charge if I didnot return the old battery. I asked them if they could tell me if the battery was built or made within the last year and they could not. I also asked if the battery could be new old stock that was made in 2002 and sitting on a shelf somewhere for the last 10 years and again they did not have a answer. They did say that Toyota must really want the old battery pretty badly to have such a high core charge. This makes me wonder about allot of things.

 

There was damage on both ends of the battery and several of the bolts on the bottom that holds the batterys had a space between the head of the bolt and the housing. The bottom of the battery was bowed inward not flat like it should be.
I did get a full refund from the seller so that was a good thing.

 

I decided to rebuild my battery. I ordered 38 GEN II cells that cost me $1400 plus $125 shipping. I removed the old battery and removed the old cells and cleaned everything up. I cleaned and painted the main bottom pan.





I then cleaned up the insulators around the bus bars, this was the most time consuming task of the whole job. I wanted to get all the old gooey stuff off. I ended up soaking the orange insulators in mineral spirits for a few hours and using acetone and a stiff brush and a flat screwdriver was able to remove all the gooey stuff. I cleaned the bus bars with a wire wheel on a bench grinder then sandpaper to polish them up.



I check all the cells that I ordered with a volt meter and match them in pairs so they closely matched each other in voltage. I mounted the cells in the case and installed all the bolts and tighten everything up. I installed the bus bars and vent tubes and then the temp. sensors. I doubled checked everything including the voltages from each wire to the computer connector. Once I was happy I put the top cover on and bolted it to the base plate.



I installed the battery in the car and fired up the car , no warning lights, WHEW.



I hooked up my laptop with TechStream with my Mongoose cable to confirm everything was looking good. Everything checked OK.



I have driven the car about 50 miles so far and everything seems ok. I have noticed that the battery on the display is showing a full charge and has not gone down yet. I will need to drive some more to see what happens with the battery meter.

 

I have drove the car some more today and the battery guage never seems to get off full. I did drive the car around a Sams Club parking lot and it finnaly jumped to halv a scale on the battery guage and shortley after it gets to half scale it starts the ICE I cannot get it to get any lower than the havf scale on the battery guage.
My question is sence the computers record what it taken from and added to the battery, when I added a new battery is there some way to reset the computer? I am thinking of the SOC area.

Hi Bob, Installing the top cover was almost like normal but when I got 3/4 inch from the top meeting the bottom there was resistance and I had to use the bolts to pull the cover down tight, but not a problem at all.
I have just got the 'Techstream' and the Mongoose interface setup and still learning it. I do know that you can record data. Technicians can simultaneously view/analyze on-board vehicle data is what it states on their webste.

Daniel

 

Thanks for the advice of unhooking the 12 volt battery. I did that and it made no changes. I did hook up my TIS Techstream with my Mongoose interface and looked at the HV battery and found under UTILTIES an iinitiliznation Aarea.
It says to use this whenever the battery pack has been replaced to calibrate the battery ECU. so I did so by following the prompts. key on ready light off, then key off. cabibration complete. I will see if this makes any differance when I drive the car again.

Daniel

 

Bob,
I looked at the TIS Techstream and it looks like with my 2010 Prius I can see and record different data streams, but hooked to my 2003 Priun that button seems to be grayed out, so I will assume that two streams recording is not possible on the 2003. I hope this helps

Daniel

 

I would like to report that after I used TIS TechStream to do the battery initizantion all the functions of the car has returned to normal.
Rebuilding the battery with newer cells thus far has solved my problems with getting DTC codes P3000 and P3009