Dorman Battery Experiences

And the time & motivation to test and find them. These are things those for-profit companies do not possess.

 

A quick update, since this thread popped up for me this morning and we're a bit past the three year anniversary of this battery being installed. These modules are now about 19 years old.

This HV battery is STILL installed in my daily driver 2007 Touring model and is just banging it out. I've probably put 50-60k mile son the car since installation, but that is just off the top of my head.
With reasonably careful driving and staying 65mph on highways, I can easily be at 53-55mpg with 480+ miles when it's time to fill up. Normal commuting with 80mph highway speeds puts me in the 45-47 mpg range.
Recently, the car has sat several times for a week or more with no use due to vacations, drive testing other cars, etc. There have been ZERO symptoms of self-discharge problems following these idle periods.


If I feel motivated enough, maybe I'll yank this battery out over the summer/fall and do some quick cycles just to see how well it's aged.
Even easier, I could do a load test using Hybrid Assistant to get the blocks graphed. I'll try to squeeze that in my schedule this weekend.

 

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

 

So, here we are.....

My 'daily driver' 2007 Touring Prius has been parked since at least July 7th. That was my last day driving to work before I went on vacation. We used our Santa Fe for the vacation, and I drove back home July 11th for 2 days to help someone move. While home, I registered/plated the 2008 I purchased in Myrtle Beach (just before COVID hit) so I could start driving it after vacation. Trying to get some baseline info on it prior to actuator replacement and a couple other minor jobs. We got back from vacation on July 15th, and I've been driving the 2008 since then.

The 2007 still has the repaired Dorman HV battery installed as mentioned earlier in this thread. I wanted to get some techstream readings in its current state, showing the exact HV battery state after sitting idle for 17? days. To do this, I connected my trickle charger to the under hood jump point. I then placed the car in IG-ON mode by pressing the power button 2x with my foot not on the brake. This was to ensure I could get techstream online with the car, while not having the engine start.

Photos 1and 2 show the dash and the MFD after turning the car on.
Photo 3 shows the health check results
Photo 4 shows the freeze frame data for the C1241 Low Battery Positive Voltage or Abnormally High Battery positive Voltage
Photo 5 is ABS Live
Photo 6 is HV Battery Live
Photo 7 shows some HV battery info. I was mainly trying to show the min/max data. Looks like these modules have minimal self discharge problems...
Photo 8 shows more HV battery info

Then I put the car in READY, all warning lights cleared themselves, as expected, except for the TPMS which has some dead batteries. I disconnected the charger and the laptop and went inside the house to grab a coke to take with me. I took the car for a drive using my normal route for going to work and coming home every day. The engine had already gone through its 'run for a minute' step and shut itself off again. I reset the MFD and rolled on out. Outdoor temperature at the house was initially around 88, peaked around 93 during the highway portion of the drive and back around 90 when I parked at home again. 45 miles round trip. The highway portion speed varied between 61 and 71 depending on traffic. Nothing special. Photo 9 shows the MFD when I got home.

After I got home, I put the car in PARK, applied the parking brake and went inside to get my OBDII Link LX and my Galaxy S4 that I use only for Hybrid Assistant. Connected it up, and the car was showing 61% SOC. I did a quick manual charge to put the car at 65% SOC to ensure I would be able to have at least 20% available to discharge for the test. Started the battery test and put the AC in AUTO and put temperature at lowest setting. It ramped up and was drawing 12 amps for the entire test. The car engine started when the battery got down to around 42-43% SOC and I stopped the test. The S4 was mighty slow generating the report, so maybe it's time for an upgrade, lol. Photo 10 shows all 14 block voltages on one graph. Notice how nice and tight all the lines are!! Very well balanced modules, with no significant weak modules and no modules that are overly strong. I would accept that graph any day for any Gen 2 battery. And the modules (27 of 28) in this one were made in 2003! The yellowish shaded area at the bottom is SOC, and you can see it has a nice steady drop from ~65% down to the point where the engine started. You can see that transient in the block voltages also, with the starting current making voltage spike downward and then upward when charging started.

I used my iphone to take photo 10, but wasn't happy with the picture. So...I decided to try to use screenshots. The first attempt at a screen shot resulted in the app closing, which kinda ruined my attitude. , considering how long it took to generate the report. So I said the heck with it. I'll try it again later to get additional info, but this was a good start. The battery test showed a duration between 5 and 6 minutes long at a continuous 12 amp discharge.