Can I borrow your battery charger/balancer/reconditioner?

I have a generation II Prius with a hybrid battery that’s been giving me problems lately. I’ve taken it apart and replaced one of the modules with a used one which made my check engine light and triangle of death go away, but now my internal resistances are all out of whack and my gas mileage is worse than when it was broken!

I think all I need to do is balance the batteries, but I don’t necessarily want to spend money on that. It’s $300 for a Maxx Volts on ebay Maxx Volts 2004-2009 Toyota Prius EL-1 Traction Battery Grid Charger Balancer | eBay
and $600-$700 for a Prolong not to mention I’ll need a way to discharge the batteries no matter which one I get.

I know it’s a longshot, but do you know of anybody who lives near Ventura, CA/Los Angeles who has one that I can borrow?

Thanks,
James

 

Why do you say that?

 

I just checked both Prolong and Maxx Volts and I didn’t see any of those harnesses for sale individually. I guess I could call them, but maybe somebody has a harness that they can let me borrow as well?

 

I just replaced the module about 1.5 weeks ago. It seems like my gas mileage is gradually getting better. It was about 28 miles per gallon now it’s 36. I have not been using the AC. Never do really. Just checked my internal resistances again through the Dr. Prius app and they seem even worse now!

 

Here’s a screenshot of my internal resistances on the Dr. Prius app. Voltage differential seems pretty good.

Before replacing the bad module all of my internal resistance as were 10. I thought maybe that wasn’t accurate because it was too perfect and I had a bad module in there, but who knows.

As you can see my internal resistances are pretty bad now. They’ve gradually gotten worse since I replaced the module. Gas mileage seems to be getting better though. Engine codes are also staying away since replacing the module.

Also, I shuffled the modules when I had the battery apart, putting the inner ones on the outside, because I read that the inner ones get hot and wear out sooner. The theory is that by shuffling them you can get more life out of the modules. It seems like now my outer ones have a high internal resistances though, so hopefully it wasn’t stupid for me to shuffle them.

 

Yeah I did! Thanks for finding that. It looks like it’s $189. Whoah!

 

That’s cool you got a new battery pack! How much did that set you back? Have you had good luck with the balancers in the past? Maybe I’ll just plop down $300 on a volt Max and be done with it.

 

OK I gotcha! It looks like some of my modules have been replaced in the past and I’ve had the car for about three years, so it’s lasted a long time! I’m guessing you recommend replacing all the modules at once? If so, do you know where I can find a bunch of cheap modules to replace whole thing?

It’s kind of a crappy car though… Terrible paint job all rusted and transactional/transmission makes noise. The transaxle/transmission noise hasn’t gotten worse in the three years that I’ve owned it, so I think it’ll continue to last a long time, but it has about 190,000 miles on it. Would be nice just to get a few more years out of it.

 

Just to be clear, are you recommending that I do not bother connecting a battery balancer? Just keep on driving it and see if the gas mileage continues to improve? My internal resistances seem to be getting more out of whack though. What do you think is best?