2020 Hybrid Automotive Reconditioning unit

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The discharger works until it reaches the user selected voltage, then the voltage will float back up to normal resting levels.

It sounds like you failed to let the battery properly rest for at least 30 minutes, or didn't discharge the battery into the normal voltage operating range after charging. You aren't the only person to do this, and won't be the last.

From the HA website, highlights are mine : "If you're not going to discharge the pack, we recommend waiting 30 minutes after disconnecting the charger before driving the vehicle."

The Prolong Hybrid Automotive Battery Charger User Guide | Hybrid Automotive has a voltage table for each of the covered batteries.

 

I followed this recommendation from others here, wait one hour and run the car on “N” couple minutes to drain the battery voltage to normal peak level ( you can use dr Prius ) then you be fine, a second recommendation you can use the discharger to get the battery to normal peak level, this recommendations from Prius chat members should be part of the prolong system instructions and warnings.

 

This story is pretty good evidence that NOTHING can recover a battery that it already on the brink of failure.
In your case, it looks like the stress of trying to "rejuvenate" it just killed the weak cells a bit faster.

The so called "reconditioning" units work best when the overall battery is still relatively healthy.......not when it is on the way out.

Please keep us updated on what happens next.
The information will be useful to others.

 

Don’t you think the cell blowout can be caused by overcharging the battery at high amps with the car right after only 10 minutes from taking it out of the prolong charger.

 

Not sure I understand the question completely. I don't think that the car will "overcharge" it ......ever.

But yes, if the charger cycle left the overall battery at a low state of charge, then the surge from the car when started would be just another source of "stress" on the weak cells.

 

No expert here but have been using there first charger with light bulbs and has kept my 07 battery going for 3 years of charging and 2 discharges.
Good product it does as advertised. car still running ok.

But there is one caveat we all understand and I wish you had run this by us prolong dudes becasue we all would have said the same thing::

If your battery has thrown the Red Triangle of Death its a done deal. It must come out for repair.RTOD is a fatal error.
No amount of exterior electronic cpr will revive that dead body.
Most likely based on your post your battery which was already probably leaking corroded itself to death sitting there and upon boot up threw a ground fault nag.
The car will be forced into limp mode and a reboot of the 12 volt battery will remove that nag and allow you to drive for a while till it launches again. Reports of battery explosions from doing that..Loud pop and smoke from the battery area which is exactly what happened to you.

But if your battery is tanking to quick purple bar at every light and taking many blocks to recover and has NOT thrown the RTOD yet it is an ideal candidate for Prolong CPR.

But NOW based on just time most 07's probably have lost there window and I wouldn't waste my time on prolonging them. Just too old not enough meat left on that bone..My 07 was 10 years old when I started most virgin 07's now will have substantial corrosion which will mitigate any prolonging quite a bit.
One way or the other it will have to come out.

More like G3's which are starting to fail now.

 

Sorry to tell you but you wrong on this one, when you charge the battery with the prolong charger you get the battery to a true 100% but when you restart the car the car doesn’t know that so the car will start charging and if the SOC was really low before you started everything the car will try as hard it can to charge the battery, and you can blow it.

 

SFO is right on the money. Frank1234 also.

"It sounds like you failed to let the battery properly rest for at least 30 minutes, or didn't discharge the battery into the normal voltage operating range after charging. You aren't the only person to do this, and won't be the last."

I measure the pack voltage before doing any work on the pack, THEN I discharge the pack to that same voltage when done. This way the computer knows the state of the pack, as soon as you start the vehicle. "Recalculating" does not need to be done.

If you have a 100% charged pack via a grid charger, and then start the car, the computer knows what state the battery was when last parked. So now it happily charges the pack. BOOM.... (Unless you shift to "Neutral" immediately.)

People have ruined their packs while "rushing" to get things done. Perhaps one of them will chime in.

 

BULL. It takes "the car" maybe two seconds to detect the actual state of charge.......or less.

And I don't believe for one second that Toyota designed the system to start charging based on the state of charge during the PREVIOIUS run without first checking it.

I think you are just blowing smoke.
Care to provide a reference ?

 

You don’t have to believe me, you free to believe whatever, but blow cells are a expected consequence of overcharging, especially when happens after driving the car right after removing it from the prolong charger.
What you think is the reason Jeff recommend to wait 30 to a hour after charging, the reason is to avoid blowing the battery, simply as that.

 

You likely did not wait long enough. You were lucky. @jerrymildred did not wait long enough and killed his battery pack.

 

That's exactly the reason. When you finish the last charge, all the cells are 100% full. The car has no idea they are that full. It assumes that it's as full as it was when it was last shut off. So, you start it up with a hot, 100% full battery and then ICE starts up it's warmup process. Guess where it puts the electricity that gets generated. After my little adventure, I go beyond Jeff's recommendation and suggest waiting an hour. Then, when you do start it, put it in neutral and run the air conditioner for a few minutes while the car figures out what just happened.

 

Couple of quick lobs on the Prolong Battery Reconditoning sets.

Yes, their instructions are TERRIBLE! When I got mine I had to call them and complain directly to their techs about how vague and bad they were. They actually made changes to their instructions at the time based on complaints and suggestions I made.

When they were at their best, I printed up a quick set of bullet point instructions on a sticker and slapped it on the sides of both my charger and discharger, so I don't have to run back to the internet every year when my memory is fuzzy, and the instructions posted on the site have deteriorated back to something unusable again.

Prolong is just a band aid and a health maintenance program. Unless your problem is really mild, you will have to make a physical repair to your battery first, to cure the problem. Prolong just rehabs the battery, kind of like jogging might do for your heart.

On the discharge cycle, it will go down to the selected voltage, then shut off. Within a minute, voltages will spring back up again, almost to their original level after a short while. There is no need to try to knock it down a second time.

For charging, it says charge to full voltage, then continue to charge for an additional...can't remember, something like no more than 6-12 hours??? (check it yourself). Whatever it is, follow it. Don't just fill it up and stop. It's those last few hours of simmering at peak voltage that does the balancing.

Whenever you do an operation, either charging or discharging, always WAIT the recommended time before moving on to the next step. Me, I always double the recommended wait time just because I'm such a pantywaist pussy and I don't want to blow an expensive repair for being too eager. I always wait at least half an hour afterwards even if they don't specify a waiting time....that's just me. It can't hurt anything.

Be careful with the plastic plugs for the power cords on your units, they are very frail. That's one of my main gripes. They get used a lot switching the one and only power cord they supply to run both units.

cheers,

 

It is pretty obvious that you don't understand how electricity really works.

A properly designed battery charger power supply will never let the charging voltage go high enough to "overcharge" a healthy battery.

As the battery voltage goes up, the internal resistance goes up too........and the charging current goes down, even if the applied voltage stays the same.

It is also obvious that you have no actual evidence of what causes the cells to short out in the situation that you are talking about.
It is entirely possible that the "reconditioning" process leaves some of the weaker cells with a lower than normal internal resistance.......and when the charging system in the car comes online, those weak cells draw more current than they should.......and fail.

Guessing at the cause is pretty much worthless.

 

And what Engineer or technical document at Toyota told you that is how it works ?
I think it is not the CAR that is assuming.

 

Sam spade 2 you win, you don’t need to wait any time after reconditioning am happy you know more than me, have a great day.

 

Unlike you, I assumed nothing. I just looked at the MFD on the car when I started it back up. It's the battery level on the car's display that says four or six bars or whatever when you just finished the final Prolong recharge that tells me the car is assuming and it's assuming wrong. Why do you have to attack practically everything everyone says on this forum. What technical document led you to believe you're the only person who isn't an idiot? You just have to pee on everyone's potato chips. And I'm pretty sure that everyone's tired of it. Rant off. Sam ignored.

 

That is not what I said and you KNOW it.

I said "if there is a failure, it is NOT because the car is blasting out a charging voltage that is too high, based on the last previous use."

 

Yes you did. You assumed that whatever holds the display memory ALSO controls the actual charging system.......and that likely is NOT true.

And I distinctly remember you actually agreeing with me.......more than once.......after you had a chance to think things over a bit.

There are a LOT of self-appointed experts who post in places like this. Some are almost always right but most are very often way out in left field wrong.

"A man needs to know his own limitations." Dirty Harry