Used EV Battery: What to check for?

I bought a hybrid battery from a scrapyard about an hour away.

Going to pick it up and wanted to know if there are any basic first tests or things to look for.

The story goes that it was from a 105K miles prius, and the owner 'blew up the engine' about 10 days ago.
I am allowed to return the part for 30 days for any reason.

My 2006 Prius EV battery failed at about 170K, and I didn't want to pay some local person $400-$500 to come take my battery and put in an unknown reconditioned one that could last... who knows how long..

My plan was to use this battery as long as it lasts, then try and use the good modules between the 2 batteries for the remaining life of the vehicle...

Any advice appreciated.

 

What type of charger is needed to charge the EV battery as a whole? I have a regular auto 12v charger

 

As far as I know. Pretty Podunk scrap yard, which is good. They didn't really understand my inquiry about core charge. That stuff is all intact in the battery case right? It looks unopened.

What's the out of vehicle voltage across the main terminals supposed to be?

 

Tried the new battery, no luck. My old battery would still drive the car, but it would have red triangle, etc. This one, would not start the car past what appeared to be ACC mode, dash lights etc but engine would not start.

I had to jump the car, so my 12V battery might be on it's way out. Strangly there was water in the left and right rear compartments, about half-way up the 12V battery.

So I then took off the cover to my old battery, and with bus bars attached, put a meter across every cell.. not sure if this is useful or not, but definitely found a normal range of about 7.87, with a couple 6.5, and a few 7.7

Testing the 'new' battery, each cell was 7.57 7.56 almost exactly, much less variance, the bus bars looked much better too.

Mine is an 06, I believe this is from an 07. Could the computer be different? Is there something I'm missing?

Thank you all kindly for your help.

 

Uh crap, just seeing now, the orange plug has to be pushed in, bar rotated up, and then clicked down... hopefully that's the problem..

 

fired right up today... I did not check on the serial numbers and am sadly too lazy to do so.... now what to do with this old battery... just let it sit until I need to replace some modules... sell and then buy modules later.... I'm sure it'll just deteriorate without use

 

Thank you Patrick. I am indeed not THAT lazy. Will check starting with your recommendations.

Will the EV system throw engine error codes if something is wrong with the systems surrounding the EV battery? Like say a fan was broken etc... in case something else caused my previous battery to fail. 170K is a pretty good mileage as far as I can tell, but just curious.

I will have to search some more for general prius maintenance at 170K... I can't remember getting spart plugs / wires changed etc...

Thank you all for your help.

 

So after 2000 or so miles, this battery is now giving me a light on the MFD, and the red triangle, but no abs or vsc lights.. might the 12V battery give an error like that? Will check the code tomorrow

 

Thanks for the info, ordered a mini vci today for $50. Will see if I have a nightmare time installing the drivers and software.

Strangely I filled up my gas tank and the warnings went away. Also my FM transmitter showed 13.7 v from the 12v outlet which seemed low compared to the Tacoma.

SkiBob I did get the computer with the new pack. I'll check that thread for recommendations on a good but also affordable setup for properly testing and conditioning the modules. I was hoping someone had built an open source Arduino powered one by now.

Was planning on getting the old battery modules up to snuff to replace modules from this newer battery as they go bad

Thank you all for the time spent helping me

 

Will check on that when I can. I'm hoping that the 12 v battery is bad, I heard somewhere that can throw the hybrid battery warning light, would be convenient if that was the fix...