2006 with 160k and repeated P0A80

I really appreciate this website and all the people on here. I've been following and referring to so many of the articles here.

A couple months ago, my car suddenly got the red triangle. The dealership said that I needed a new battery, and eventually a new water pump. I couldn't afford $4500 as I bought the car just 9 months earlier and am making payments on the car.

I found a guy that was to "recondition" the battery, which set me back about $1200+. After getting it back, the car has been making a rattle sound in the engine bay when under acceleration (it sounds like a loose screw, but I don't know).

After about a month, I got the red triangle again. The car's performance deteriorates, the state of charge fluctuates a lot more. One minute it is green then literally a minute later it is purple then green again. The guy that reconditioned my hv battery said all the cells are good but for some reason became unbalanced, so he put it on the grid charger and rebalanced it (I believe it was on there for about 24 hours).

2-3 weeks later, it happens again. Same thing, the guy says it is unbalanced again and stuck it on the grid charger (because of time constraints, it was only on the grid for about 5 hours).

Then again 2 weeks later it repeats itself. A couple days before it happened, I tried out the elm327 adapter, custom pids, and torque app. Before the triangle came on, the delta state of charge got to about 0.9% and was charging up to just about 90% and down to just below 39%. Same thing though, from high to low in a matter of less than a minute. Same code P0A80. Sitting on the driveway, all 14 modules would be consistently within .2 volts. But when the car started acting up, I saw a voltage difference of about 3 volts between highest and lowest modules. The repair guy said the same thing again. The cells are good but got unbalanced again. This time he recommended for me to leave the car for the weekend so it can sit on the grid charger for a minimum of 24 hours, which I did. I picked it up yesterday and it's driving fine right now.

He is also recommending that I buy a grid charger and charge the battery every couple weeks to avoid these problems.

Does this sound right to anyone? Is this acceptable and normal that an hv battery that was just reconditioned for $1200 less than 2 months ago should be experiencing these issues? And is the recommendation of buying a grid charger and charging the hv battery a realistic solution in this case? Or did I pay $1200 and nothing useful was done? I mean, how do I know if he actually reconditioned the battery, or has just been resetting the fault code and grid charging the battery?

Btw, I did the auxiliary battery test and it was perfect. I don't know when the battery was last replaced but I believe with how strong it is, that is was done sometime recently before purchasing the car late last year.

The repair guy is a totally nice guy - seems like a stand up person. He doesn't seem like he's trying to get out of anything, but I also want to make sure I am not getting the short end of the stick. I don't know how he reconditioned the battery and I don't know how it is usually done (i tried to read through but it's a bit complicated) and what to expect afterwards. He's a nice guy, but how do I know if he knows what he is doing and what I paid for is reasonable for this outcome? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Hi. Yes, I'm in southern California. I found this guy by using google maps. It was really shadey at first but he let me drop the car off at his home and I met with him before handing over the key. I was desperate and took a chance. Surprisingly, there aren't many options here in San Diego, at least, that I could find. All other places that seemed reliable were at least a couple hours away.

 

Thank you very much for your reply. When a hv battery is reconditioned, only the suspect modules are replaced, right? And everything should be good for awhile, at least until another module goes bad?

 

He gave me a 12 month 12k mile warranty including labor.

 

Thank you, guys. You are amazing people. You have helped me a lot. I will talk with him about having the hv battery reconditioned appropriately and get a feel if he knows how and will actually do it. I already know he is going to tell me to wait and see if I get the p0a80 code again now since he rebalanced it again fot 24 hours, which may be a couple weeks if it does.

 

That's a great idea and makes sense.

Another question came to mind now. Maybe I'm overanalyzing as usual. I have the 12 month warranty and let's say he reconditioned the battery by replacing module x. If 6 months from now, module y becomes bad, does the warranty for the reconditioned battery apply to that module or just the one he originally replaced? I would assume that his warranty would cover the entire battery as it was the entire battery that was supposed to be reconditioned. Sorry if this sounds dumb but just want to make sure my view makes sense.

Thanks

 

Is this due to just a bad module, or do you speculate that there may be something else that may be causing the module to overheat? No other fault codes have popped up and the hv battery temp and battery air intake all seem reasonable at the time of monitoring.

 

Thanks that helps me understand it all a little easier. The battery as a whole is only as strong as its weakest link.