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The battery fires at ECU sense connector thread

Discussion in 'Generation 1 Prius Discussion' started by ChapmanF, Mar 19, 2015.

  1. Dxta

    Dxta Senior Member

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    What mileage on her? Looks terribly corroded.
    Definitely, the first owner you bought it from, wasn't carrying out any yearly or so, maintenance on the pack.

    Pls, do ensure you clean up the blower fan also. That too might be filled with dust.

    Have you also checked the 12volt battery terminals?


    Dxta
     
  2. Mendel Leisk

    Mendel Leisk Senior Member

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    This sounds interesting. Googling, I see mention of PRV Engineering.

    How did the flipside of those bus bars look? Seems like all the pictures show the side with washers and bolts. Just curious.
     
    #62 Mendel Leisk, Nov 20, 2017
    Last edited: Nov 20, 2017
  3. pilotgrrl

    pilotgrrl Senior Member

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    Not to be a beeyotch, but back in the day when I was a pre-sales engineer for a company that sold data networking gear, wire and cable, the manufacturers had already come up with the PC terms plug and socket. Just saying!


    Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.
     
  4. LEVE

    LEVE Member

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    Last month I repaired my 2005 Prius for a problem with the HV Battery. It also had the HV ECM corrosion on the connector from the sense wiring. It was so bad that the corrosion had followed down the pin, through the connector and actually eaten away one of the pins.

    I'd purchased a used "Dead" HV battery for the 2005 a year, or so ago for parts. I took it down to get the HV ECM and swap into my battery. To my surprise it had the same problem, albeit not as bad. The corrosion had not eaten the pin in half.

    It seems to be a common problem. I haven't seen it on my 2002's yet, but I'm keeping an eye out for it.
     
  5. Dxta

    Dxta Senior Member

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    You get that also on some Camry hybrids
     
  6. Matthew100

    Matthew100 Junior Member

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    23845227_10155048684521297_546858113_n.jpg 23846110_10155048683916297_539474690_n.jpg
     
  7. Matthew100

    Matthew100 Junior Member

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    See the above post for the photos ( didn't post my text for what ever reason)

    Has done 255,000 Kms. 13 years old. Owned for the most part by a the Department of transport and was regularly serviced at the Dealership.
    Last entry in the service maintenance log was 213,267 km on the 4th November 2013. After which they have changed books but I don't have that. What I have noticed is that the battery has been rebuilt, with a string of non sequential modules. Our rather wasteful government department would probably replace the entire thing rather than butcher the pack some time in the last 40,000kms.

    Have disassemble the fan and cleaned every fin. Pulling a cloth back and forth. came up looking like new. the air compressor only removed part of the dirt.
     
  8. Matthew100

    Matthew100 Junior Member

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    All the same on both sides.

    The new busbars are finished. All silver plated and looking very pretty. Pictured next to the ones I pulled out of the replacement harness. The ones in the replacement harness weren't as bad as the ones I had removed from the car. Every mating was polished and cleaned before being assembled.
    23874539_10155048656906297_1840902926_o.jpg 23960727_10155048657146297_790635446_o.jpg 23897418_10155048657291297_221296677_o.jpg 23874247_10155048657306297_1619791459_o.jpg 23897201_10155048657696297_450194697_o.jpg

    Being silver plated they will conduct better, have less contact resistance (when there is so many series connections that's got to add up) and won't corrode again. I also added a zinc washer to act as a sacrificial anode on all the busbars. Whether this works or not will yet to be seen but is far easy maintenance swapping out washers than cleaning all those busbars again.

    Cruising around with minimum reassembled. Covers for airflow. Going to test the two different computers 2005 , 2010 and see if can see a difference. Have Torque installed on my tablet and it mounts on my dash nicely with all the other displays.
    23874072_10155048658156297_35913134_o.jpg 23960780_10155048658271297_1813689329_o.jpg
     
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  9. Dxta

    Dxta Senior Member

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    My interest would be how both battery ECUs reacts with the battery. Pls as the test progresses, let's see how the module voltages and all that, behave.


    Dxta
     
  10. Dxta

    Dxta Senior Member

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    You bought the silver plated bus bars, or you silver plated them yourself?
     
  11. Matthew100

    Matthew100 Junior Member

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    I cleaned up the old ones. Vinegar and salt and scrubbed them with a brass wire brush. Looked at doing the silver coating myself but there was a local company that did industrial silver plating for electrical contacts so just got them to do that part.
     
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  12. dabard051

    dabard051 Tinkerer-in-Charge

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    Great photos, man!
     
  13. ikefor

    ikefor Member

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    nice post.
     
  14. dabard051

    dabard051 Tinkerer-in-Charge

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    I nominate this as a sticky. It's likely to become more frequent now that the fleet is 15+ years old, and a battery fire is not something that anyone wants to see. I maintain a couple of Gen I Prii in my family, and this is now an annual inspection item (come spring weather) and I am on the lookout for recommendations for a robust contact cleaner method or chemical for the pins.
     
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  15. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    I didn't see this post back at the time, just now for the first time.

    That'd be the right business to be in for this discussion, and I don't want to discount your experience, but there are parts of your conclusion that leave me doubtful.

    What leaves me doubtful here is that these should be carrying very little current. They are only inputs to a voltage sensor, with impedance you'd expect to be pretty high. (IIRC, somebody tore down a battery ECU once and found it had one, or a small number of, sample-and-hold circuits feeding voltage sensors, and a bank of relays connecting the S/H inputs to the different sense wires in turn. With each switch of the relays, there's surely a little current spike while bringing the capacitor in the S/H circuit to match the voltage on that wire, but a very brief one. Even if the instantaneous current is larger, the average over time has got to be tiny, and that's what'll matter for I²R heating.

    At least under design operation.

    My own working picture is still that the malachite grows on two or more adjacent pins until it forms a conductive path between them. Then you have current flowing that isn't the intended tiny amount into a voltage sensor. And it's flowing over a lousy path made of dirty pins and trails of malachite. The result could be just I²R heating of the dirty pins and malachite, or tiny arcs that just burn away enough malachite to extinguish themselves. (As your calculations showed, it doesn't have to burn away very much distance when the pin-to-adjacent-pin potential is only in the tens of volts.) This is a cycle that could have repeated itself a lot of times before the thing was opened up and pictures taken. And it would be consistent with the reports by more than one person of erratically-fluctuating, even sign-changing, voltage readings reported by the battery ECU.

    I'm not sure what would be a good design for an experiment to see better just what's going on.

    -Chap
     
  16. MDNHW11

    MDNHW11 Junior Member

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    I have seen similar examples where windshields have been replaced, and "corrosion" results on the terminals from the water that enters via the poorly sealed windshield. The corrosion can form a bridge, and the black mess can result.
     
  17. dabard051

    dabard051 Tinkerer-in-Charge

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    This just in: my 2002 Prius (275k miles) showed Orange Triangle of Death and P3006... inspecting the traction battery shows melted HV connectors. I will take photos in the next couple of days...
     
  18. padroo

    padroo Senior Member

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    For whatever reason electrical connectors get loose with age and if it carries any amount of current it starts generating heat. The more heat and the hotter the connector gets and then it looses its ability to make any electrical contact and then it will sometimes flash. This may just lead to an open circuit or even a fire.

    I had a van with an intermittent A/C problem. I pulled the fuse and it looked good but was still open. You won't see this very often I guarantee you. They were using the old glass fuses back then and with further troubleshooting I found that the fuse holder had been getting hot and then it lost it's ability to hold the fuse tight enough and instead of the fuse opening up it would open it up on the end with the bad connection. You pull the fuse out and the narrow center part would be intact but it was still open on the one end, very weird. I ended up bypassing the fuse holder with another fuse holder and never had the problem again.
     
  19. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    All of that does happen, but voltage sensing circuits are usually built to have such high impedance that they are as close as you can practically get to not carrying any amount of current. There really shouldn't be any detectable I²R heating of those connections.

    There seems to be growth of malachite around the ones that have gone boom, and it also turns up in samples that have not gone boom yet but might be on the way to. My main working idea is still that that stuff grows until it creates a bridge between pins.
     
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  20. slimfrancis

    slimfrancis Member

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    Hello Folks! Has anyone been able to find a part number or source to purchase the orange 22 pin receptacles? I've got a few burnt ones I'd like to have replaced. The inside of my ECU's appear to be clean. Thanks in advance!
     
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