HV HYBRID PARTS Hybrid Battery Cell Module (Renewed)

IF YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TO BE SAFE AROUND HIGH VOLTAGES THEN DO NOT DO THIS PROCEDURE OR GET SOMEONE WHO IS COMPETENT TO HELP YOU. About 5% of the procedure requires knowledge of safety around these voltages, the rest is just performing the procedure.OK, so I got the triangle of death on my 2007 Prius. I noticed the hybrid battery battery acting strangely for about two weeks prior. I may start the car and it have very little power in the battery and then after driving a few blocks on level ground, all of a sudden my battery is totally full and green.After the triangle and check engine light appeared, I checked the OBD II port with my BlueDriver (ASIN: B00652G4TS) scan tool and it indicated the hybrid battery problem.I looked at several Youtube video’s on examining the battery pack. One of the best I saw for removal and installation of the pack was made by Doorman Automotive products. It explained pretty well on how to remove the interior trims to access the battery and how to remove the high voltage “key” from the battery pack and get the battery pack from the vehicle.You can pretty much strip out the whole car interior for access to the pack by yourself. The weight of the pack makes removal from the vehicle a two person job though. Set the pack after you remove it on a piece of cardboard on a sturdy table. Remove the outer cover and remove all the battery interconnections as shown in a ton of Youtube videos. You will want to use a power screwdriver for this task.Write the numbers 1 through 28 on a piece of notepaper. Test the voltages on each of the 28 modules. Since the polarity placement on each module reverses each module, a digital meter is a great help since you can just read the positive and negative resulting voltages without moving the leads back and forth. My pack had every module reading 7.8 volts (yours may vary depending on how long your vehicle was parked) except for module 19 which was 6.58 volts which indicated a single bad cell in that battery.I replaced that module with the HV HYBRID PARTS replacement module. You will have to disassemble the framing that clamps the modules together. Keep in mind that these modules have indents and pins on the sides so you cannot just remove one module. They kind of fit together like Legos. You must remove all the modules up to the bad module. On mine I had to remove modules 20 through 28 to access module 19. In addition to the clamping, each module is held on by one screw that is on the bottom of the module. The case metal will bend if you try and tilt the battery pack on its side, so slide the battery pack to the edge of the table and work from underneath on each side (making sure your table is stable with all that weight on the edge side).I sampled my voltages and the pack had dropped to about 7.7 volts per module. The HV replacement module was also at 7.7 volts, so I didn’t need to adjust its charge. I cleaned all the interconnecting copper battery shunts, installed the replacement module and reassembled the battery pack. I used a friend to help me lift it back into place and reinstalled it, leaving out the interior trim.I reset the Prius error codes with my BlueDriver OBDII tool and gave the car a test drive. No errors and seems to run as new. I then reinstalled the interior.Car is back to normal.Since I already owned the BlueDriver tool, not counting my labor, this repair cost one module or $39.95, about 2 cc's of pool acid to prepare a solution to clean the copper shunts, some dielectric grease and about four days of downtime on the Prius (including the shipping time). If you had the modules instantly available, this would be a 1 day job. Way cheaper to get your car back to running condition than thousands required at the dealer.Thank you HV Battery Parts and the Youtube contributors that made this economy fix possible.One failure is a fluke, two is a pattern. Should I get a second failure in this pack, it is time to retire the whole pack and get a new one from Toyota or one from a late model salvage.

Have ordered these twice, one unit the first time, two the second time. The second order had one of the units measure 6.6 volts upon unpackaging (the others measured measured 7.9 volts). Thank goodness I ordered two as I had my car torn apart awaiting these modules, because I was able to replace the bad unit and just use an old one to get up and running. Guy from EV Hybrid Parts said they must have a missed the "parasitic drain" when they tested it, leading to the bad cell in the module. Seems like a bit of a crapshoot on these.UPDATE: after buying numerous modules from HV Hybrid Parts, I'm convinced that they are not screening these units correctly. Normally, reconditioned modules should be able to hold about 7200 mAh charging, and maybe a little less than that on the discharging cycle. The units purchased from HV Hybrid show significantly less, and even when I tried to recondition them (i.e. charge them up to close to 9 volts, then discharge to 6.1 volts), measuring the capacity only yielded 4500 mAh for one, 2500 for another, and 2000 for still another. The modules charge up fine, so they seem good superficially, but if you put these into a hybrid pack, they will throw a "hybrid battery fail" code after a short time. Yes, one needs to make sure to "balance the pack, but the modules being sold by these guys do not even allow one to have a chance at doing so. I reconditioned my entire pack, and the original modules charge up fine and hold significantly more mAh than what these guys are selling. When asked as to why this is, the support person didn't address my concern, but merely said that "balancing a pack is difficult, which is why we recommend buying a reconditioned hybrid pack instead", which is $1000. It's easy to prove a battery can charge to approx 8 volts, and to pass a load test, but if you don't have the "capacity" to hold a charge for a certain amount of time, you will continue to get error codes from your car. Net-net: unless these guys fix their testing criteria and disclose the capacity of the individual units, it seems that they are just buying old packs, breaking them up, charging them up, and doing a load test and then selling them as "good", which they aren't. I've brought 5 module from them, one didn't charge to 8 volts and 3 others are just not healthy enough to work sufficiently. Stay away.

ordered 29 of these batteries to replace my "failing" batteries. returned 10 immediately due to voltage and physical condition of the batteries. replaced everything else and 3 months later.. my battery pack is again giving me the triangle of death. these batteries have failed right after 3 months of very limited driving.. I drive this vehicle less the 3 miles 1 way to work. under 10 miles per day. 3 months and these batteries are failing. I should of returned all of these from the beginning due to the physical condition of it. these batteries had not mileage listed and condition looks as if it was pulled straight from the junkyard and sold to me, with all the dirt and corrosion included, one of the battery even had a broken exhaust port and many were "bent", curved at the middle.

Just one cell module did the trick for me!I had purchased an inexpensive used and "rebalanced" complete Hybrid Pack ($575 installed) with a 12 month warranty for my 2006 Prius. It never held a charge when parked on the display as well as the original and after 13 months it blew the alarm. This time I decided to crack it open and fix it myself. In retrospect, I should have done it the first time, the used pack had a lot of dust and some corrosion that my original probably didn't.Like others advise, don't do this job if you are not confident you can handle HVDC safely. If you're not sure what that means, you probably shouldn't.There are a lot of bolts to loosen and I recommend investing in a good battery powered impact driver if you don't already have one.Make sure the 12v battery is fully charged before starting the car after repairing the Hybrid Battery. If it isn't, the car won't start and the fault codes won't clear out.