P3024 code and a painted over check engine light

A Gen 2 battery will not physically mount or connect to a Gen 3 vehicle. The cases and electronics are totally different.

P3024 is Block 14 becomes weak. That means Block 14 (the 2 modules closest to the ecu in the battery) has one (or two) modules failing. If this started 8 months ago, I'm impressed. The last battery I worked on that was reset over and over again for months actually had burned a hole through the side of a module by the time the owner had it replaced.

As with most things in life, the worth of a vehicle is up to the owner. Although a salvage vehicle, if the condition is good, 180k miles is nothing to be scared of.

Did the smog check people tell you what codes were present?

 

Peter,

Your HV battery has 28 individual modules inside. When your battery was brand new, you could think of it as having 28 "D" cell batteries inside. Just like people handle aging differently, as time passes and miles accumulate, each individual module also handles it differently. After 180k miles, instead of having 28 "D" cells, you now have 7 "D" cells, 7 "C" cells, 7 "AA" cells and 5 "AAA" cells and 2 "AAAA" batteries.

Obviously, the D cells have the most capacity and the AAAA have the least capacity.

The problem is that those AAAA batteries deplete much faster and their voltage drops much more quickly than the D and C cells. That voltage difference is what triggers the "xx block become weak" module fault codes.

When we speak of balancing, the goal is to cycle the modules deeply enough to try to return the chemistry back to "D" cell condition. It's much more likely to end up with Some Ds, and some Cs.

Not everyone has the ability or equipment to do this. In those cases, most try to perform some type of load test on each module to determine which ones are the obvious AAAA and AAA modules. If you can replace those, then the battery should at least last 6 months to a year (or even more) before the next C degrades to a AAA or AAAA.

If not able to do a load test, then the only option is to replace the ones that are obviously bad and just roll on with your fingers crossed. I HAVE seen this done on a Gen 2 battery and it lasted over a year before I lost track of the battery.

So the answer to your first question is: Although replacing those 2 modules (with no other testing performed) is not the ideal solution, it CAN work. You just don't know when or which module will fail next. It could be a week or it could be a year or more. Along with that, it's usually easy to identify which of the 2 modules is the troublemaker once you're able check them individually.