yet another mpg thread. I ran Dr. Prius, and says my battery health is at 78%. I don't know exactly how to run other tests I've seen suggested here on this forum. But, I have bad mpg. Like, I doordash, so I basically do the same thing all the time. Same hwy miles, same city, rural road driving. When I got the car, it did around 47-48mpg normally. Few months after I got it, the battery got the Red triangle of death. Found one bad cell. Replaced it, refurbished all the other batteries with a hobby charger, to around 5500 ma each. Took 3 weeks plus. (got them to 5000 first then went ahead to see how much further I could push them, about 3 more charges each). I balanced the battery, and put it back in the car. I started seeing 50-52mpg consistently. Lasted about 4-5 months, and recently, I had had that coolant problem the entire time, with it hunting. But my MPG started lowering, to around 45mpg-ish. I replaced that coolant thing. Maybe improved for a bit, but, for the past 8 fillups, I believe I have averaged 40-44mpg. Best out of them was one at @48mpg. But evenly besides that either getting 40-44mpg. The car will show me about 46-47mpg, but at the pump thats what I see. I fill up the same every time. Before with the 50+mpg, i would fill up the same and go by that to determine my mpg. So, can someone explain to me how to run a different test anyone can maybe tell me something about, or any other things I could do? Cars got 105K miles. 2006. One thing told me that i had an unbalanced blade at #6.. thats it. Any tips?
If the car is worth it, the best improvement is going to be to install a new hybrid vehicle (HV) battery. The next best option to baby it along and give you some breathing space is buying a grid charger and discharger so that you can recondition and balance the HV battery in the car. If you did this every 6 months, it could stretch out the battery life another couple of years. Don't ignore all the normal servicing either. On that, if you haven't changed the spark plugs in the last 100,000 miles, you should do that. Make sure you buy genuine NGK or Denso spark plugs and buy from a reputable bricks-and-mortar store (or even an online dealer store, e. g., https://parts.olathetoyota.com/oem-parts/, Genuine OEM Toyota Parts and Accessories Online - Toyota Parts Deal, etc), not Amazon or eBay. Those sites are awash with counterfeit plugs. You might feel like you got a bargain buying them for a quarter of the price, but you will be changing them before you've done 20-30,000 miles on them. Ask me how I know.
