Cleaned corrosion from buss bars now getting P3000 code

We can all relax now that Maria got her car working on her own. Knowing that her newer OEM battery is the upgraded version capable of dreams her current Prius can't match up with.

 

Hi Maria,

Having the heater going and set at 80F will definitely keep the engine running most of, if not all, the time. That will reduce mpg. Your mpg will also be affected by the time being driven. My son will only get around 35-38mpg on my 2007, where I will typically get 50 mpg+, and it all has to do with trip duration. Both of us will get around 27mpg for the first 5 minutes as the car does it's warmup cycle, and then 45mpg+ afterwards. The problem is that my son only has about a 7 minute drive to work, so he only gets 2 minutes of good mpg, while I have a total drive of about 27 minutes, where I get ~22 minutes of good mpg. He ends up with 35-37 mpg for a tank and I end up with 48-50ish. A lot of short trips will really make the average mpg suffer, but it's just because the car doesn't get the chance to bring the average up.

 

Bravo on the process. Although you in the end decided to buy a whole battery, the money on the torque wrench and other goodies wasn't wasted, as you got to use them. in the fall of 2020, I was in the same situation, finally got my battery out of the 2004 car and down to the basement and did the whole thing (replacing 4 bad modules, mixing and matching, cycling to improve capacity, balancing). Unfortunately, though I thought I was stopping potential corrosion with NoAlox compound, I've just started getting two errors that Dr Prius himself said meant either bad battery ECU (nope, it looks good) or bad harnesses/electricity getting to the ECU...check! There is lots of corrosion on the copper bus bars and nuts that were pristine after I cleaned them. I'm thinking what to do. Nickel upgraded bus bars/nuts, or just remove, clean them, coat with something (maybe not NoAlox), check the resistance of the orange harness wires and replace if necessary... Anyway, great we work on these things!

 

From the factory all the wiring and connections is clean and dry? Maybe for expedience, maybe for a reason, but good to tread cautiously.

 

I coded my battery lugs before assembly with the red CRC spray for battery terminals then I assembled the bus bars onto the studs of the batteries and then sprayed the fronts then applied the nuts then sprayed over the nuts Very lightly. It's been working great since that assembly spends a lot of time in the green and everything seems to be running spot on. Somebody rode in and said that that battery spray doesn't conduct electricity okay well I'm not sure about all that but I do know that the bus bars and the nuts and the connections are all tight still showing red I can easily lift up part of the cover from the front edge of the battery or the side edge facing the trunk lift up look at the red with a flashlight said it back down and put the bolts in and go. This has been over a year ago this was done on a brand new battery straight out of the Toyota dealer out of that big funny box I took it home took the bus bar strips off sprayed put them back on sprayed the back side of the bus bars the front side the nuts after connection closed it up been that way ever since and working very well. Then I did the same thing to a like new battery that I got out of a towing lot It has a information code scanning thing on the sticker so I know it's not the original battery and I took it apart sprayed it the same there was no evidence of corrosion or anything on this brand new looking battery so I sprayed it put it all back together it's in my other car working perfectly It's only been about 3 months No need to check it yet.

 

Reply to myself: I removed the battery and took off all the bus bars that were various shades of awful green. I cleaned the corrosion with vinegar and salt and then used fine and very fine sandpaper to make them look good again. I installed and this time put a coating of dielectric grease on the outside (where nothing needs to contact the busbars) and put it all together. It works - or at least it has not generated a RTOD in 3 days since I reinstalled. I think this was the issue - unusually not the harness or the Battery ECU, but - perhaps due to my use of NoAlOx or the moisture in the rear of thear car - extreme corrosion on the voltage sensors and busbars after 3.5 years.