Help! Oh no! No Ready Light after replacing Traction battery

You do not have the Hi voltage battery Big Orange Safety interlock connector seated properly. Has to be slid and locked.

And if me I would still get a DC voltmeter and check the 12 volt battery voltage on the front jump points also.
Report that back here. Anything less than 12.3 is not good.

 

This is a really common problem. There's definitely a trick to getting that interlock fully seated. As Ed said, make sure the handle slides and locks into position.

 

The handle has to be slid upwards after it is locked in position.

 

We want to see the 2nd mode. Here's how:

After car has sat overnight and without turning it on and without your foot on the brake push the start button once...and then again. 2 pushes no brake. That puts the car in IGN and applies a load on the 12 volt. Measure the front jump points in this mode. This shows the true battery health.

Since you said 12.3 in standby I would expect it to be 11.6 which is screaming replace me!!!

 

I think is normal to see state of charge variations in the coarse of a day or two. The battery ECU has to guess initially. Temperature change will cause it to be off a bit, and it then will recalibrate after some usage. How much it varies while driving depends on the conditions. Sometimes I see two purple bars in stop and go with A/C on. Most people will say that it usually stays near 5-6 bars. Plenty of all green going downhill.

I would say 12V battery is probably fine, but the drop in MPG is caused by all kinds of things. I would say it is one of the more mysterious of topics here, where a small drop in MPG can't be diagnosed.

Take a look at PriiDash, which forum is here on PC, as it can log the voltages of all the cells. The author has done some plotting of cell variation, and is very able to help you get started.

 

A couple of months ago my 2005 was acting kind of weird. I was expecting the traction battery to fail as it felt the ones I see with bad traction batteries do, however, all is back to normal now. I would see how it goes for now.

 

Aux battery 12 in load is OK. Don't like the change of soc just sitting though. And your low mileage may just be just
its stuck in town mode. Once it memorizes alot of town stop & go it takes a nice long hi way drive to get back to good numbers. So try that. Zero out reset consumption meter and go for a nice long hi way drive with full hypermile mode.

If it was me and I had spent $$$ or new traction and it was not looking really good I would spend $125 more and either find an Indie or go to dealer and have them hook up the Techstream and go for a ride. They can check all Hybrid battery parameters. Charge rate, balance,delta,temp. They will charge $125. Post there exact conclusions and all numbers back here.

Also make sure you change the Inverter coolant too. Its cheap easy and will really help.

 

Sometimes (especially running with A/C on high) I find that my SOC can drop pretty rapidly when I first start the prius and get underway. Normally when just sitting though, it doesn't lose any SOC bars. Remember that the Prius tries to minimize the use of the engine (even though it's running) in the first minute or two after you start to drive! This can drain the traction battery really quickly in the first minute or so.

I think it usually happens like this: I park the car with 6 bars SOC, but the A/C is running and it's in EV mode while I'm maneuvering to park etc. So it's probably borderline to drop to 5 bars anyway (maybe it even drops to 5 during the last moments of parking and I don't notice). Then when I get back in some time later, the A/C comes back on and again if it's warm it may remain fully electric while maneuvering out of the car park. Then when you get on the road the Prius always tries to minimize the power from the engine and uses the traction battery heavily, so you look down and suddenly you're at 2 or three bars.

I'm not saying that this happens to me all the time, but it's definitely something I see from time to time. A really good tip to avoid seeing this so often is tap the accelerator and kick the engine on when you first get in, then let it just idle in "P" for about 45 to 60 seconds before you drive off, especially if you need to accelerate fairly quickly once you're on the road. Another thing that can help a little is driving with the windows open for the first two minutes instead of using the A/C, though I know that one is not always practical if you're sitting in traffic and not moving.

 

Thee OP is saying he's losing charge overnight.

 

Taylor Automotive (The home of ReInVolt) is in Sanford NC. Take your Prius there and have them tell you the health of your "new" traction battery.

JeffD

 

Yeah I know that, but I think sometimes when people say this, that the above is what's really happening.

People sometimes under-estimate how quickly you can drop SOC bars if you're at 5 or less first thing when you start out without letting it have a short warmup first. Especially if the AC is on high, and even more so if they were running in electric mode just before they shut down previously as it might have been just about to drop a bar anyway. (And it seem to take about 10 seconds after it reaches a particular SOC threshold before it actually changes so you could shut off before you seen the change).

 

Yeah thats not right.

Reinvolt.

 

How long is the drive to church? Lots of short trips with the engine cold will drain the battery.

You should try my suggestion of letting the Prius idle in park for 45 to 60 seconds before driving. It will minimize the loss of bars in the first mile.

 

See, and they didn't try to up-sell you to a ReInVolt (at least for now).

JeffD