Traction Battery Repair - Car Won't Start?

Hey all -

My 2006 prius with 183k miles is experiencing some hybrid battery problems for the second time. The first time was about a year and half ago. I got the Triangle of Death, bought the OBDII cable and got an error code that said that Block 8 was bad. I removed the battery, and discovered one battery cell at significantly lower voltage than the rest (I think it was around 5.9). I replaced it, put the battery back in and the car was good to go until earlier this month.

This time, I got the triangle of death again, and the OBDII cable told me the code this time was P0A80. This was less helpful than the last time, but I figured at the very least, I could take battery out, check the voltages and figure out what I wanted to do next. Of the 28 cells, #20 was bad (6.7v) compared to the rest that were all about at 7.95v. 3 others were a little bit low (7.88v, 7.84v, 7.80v) but I didn't think they were necessary to replace.

After receiving a new battery cell the other day, I installed it and put the battery back in the car. When I turned on the car with my foot on the brake, the Check engine light was on, but the red triangle was not. The ready light was not on. The car was on, but I was unable to put it in drive or reverse, just neutral. When I hit the power button again, I could hear some clicking coming from the traction battery on the driver's side. When the clicking was happening, the dashboard lights would flash between the ready light and the check engine light. This happened about 3 times, quickly, but after that, nothing happened and I continued to not be able to put the car in drive or reverse.

 

I tried pulling out the safety disconnect and putting it back in, but no luck. I'm pretty confident it's seated in there properly.

This morning, I tried running the OBDII scanner and got no error codes back on the hybrid battery (previously P0A80), but I'm still unable to start the engine and the clicking described above is still happening. With the car on, the 12V battery is only getting 11.17v. So maybe I should try replacing the 12v battery? I was also considering taking the traction battery out again and trying to clean all of the nuts and copper pieces that connect all of the battery cells together.

Any thoughts?

 

How do I charge the 12v? By hooking it up to another car and jumping it?

 

So i left the car turned on for 20 minutes while I tried to poke around the internet a little bit more. Eventually, the big red triangle came on, though this time it was due to low voltage on the 12v battery, which had dropped to below 10v, which makes sense because the car had been turned on for a while without the engine on. After turning off the car, I went to go turn it back on and voila, the engine turned on and I was able to put the car in reverse and drive.

Right now, I've left the car running and the only light on the dashboard that's on is the (!) light (though the ABS and VSC lights are not on). The error codes that are present are C1377 (Capicator), C1310 (HV Battery malfunction) and C1259 (HV System Regenerative Malfunction).

It appears as though the problem is fixed enough for the engine to turn on again, but I'm skeptical given what's happened so far that the car is "fixed".

Any ideas of how to proceed?