Followup to Prius battery woes

[PeterB]

GGD wrote:
Maybe a good way to proceed is the following.

Give the 12V battery a good charging by letting the car "Run" while parked.

At the same time, start go through the initial steps in the battery swap process which is mostly removing panels to get access to the battery but stop short of disconnecting the battery.

This will give you an idea of the process, what tools you might be missing, and how comfortable you are in doing it yourself.

Then, after a good charging, if you find that the car still needs jumping as frequently, you'll have a better idea if you should just order a new battery to change yourself, or find a place to do the complete job.

Good ideas, all around.

Also ... should I be concerned of the possibility of theft, if the car is left running unattended like this...?

[Acer]

As I said in a previous thread, you can change this battery while wearing a tuxedo. It is that easy. And yeah, forget the torque wrench, good heavens, who does that on a battery outside of the factory?

[Filliam H. Muffman]

Filliam H. Muffman wrote:
Has it been snowing recently in NO?

Wow, spoke too soon. Weather Channel said there is going to be snow in the northern parts of LA on Monday. miley-shocked003:

I wasn't sure how the Prius charged the 12 V battery, good to know it is charged slowly off the drive battery.

[mikebw]

PeterB wrote:
[quote=GGD]
Maybe a good way to proceed is the following.

Give the 12V battery a good charging by letting the car "Run" while parked.

At the same time, start go through the initial steps in the battery swap process which is mostly removing panels to get access to the battery but stop short of disconnecting the battery.

This will give you an idea of the process, what tools you might be missing, and how comfortable you are in doing it yourself.

Then, after a good charging, if you find that the car still needs jumping as frequently, you'll have a better idea if you should just order a new battery to change yourself, or find a place to do the complete job.

Good ideas, all around.

Also ... should I be concerned of the possibility of theft, if the car is left running unattended like this...?
I assume you have the wireless key thing, so you can start the car by pressing start. Exit the car and then see if you can lock it with you and the key being on the outside. It might not like it, but if that works you should be OK. The car will run without the key until it gets turned off, so don't just leave it ON with the doors unlocked, if you think someone might steal it.

[PeterB]

mikebw wrote:
[quote=PeterB]
[quote=GGD]
Maybe a good way to proceed is the following.

Give the 12V battery a good charging by letting the car "Run" while parked.

At the same time, start go through the initial steps in the battery swap process which is mostly removing panels to get access to the battery but stop short of disconnecting the battery.

This will give you an idea of the process, what tools you might be missing, and how comfortable you are in doing it yourself.

Then, after a good charging, if you find that the car still needs jumping as frequently, you'll have a better idea if you should just order a new battery to change yourself, or find a place to do the complete job.

Good ideas, all around.

Also ... should I be concerned of the possibility of theft, if the car is left running unattended like this...?
I assume you have the wireless key thing, so you can start the car by pressing start. Exit the car and then see if you can lock it with you and the key being on the outside. It might not like it, but if that works you should be OK. The car will run without the key until it gets turned off, so don't just leave it ON with the doors unlocked, if you think someone might steal it.
Right, but if someone somehow gets in the car with it running, can't they just drive off with it? (They wouldn't be able to start it up again without the FOB, but they might not care about that...)

Edit: my FOB doesn't start the car, I have to press the On button to do that, but I can exit the car and then just lock it manually with the manual key.

[GGD]

I was thinking that you'd practice the battery swap at the same time as you're letting the 12V recharge with the car "On", so locking wouldn't be an issue.

But if you do lock it while running with the key outside the car, for the most part nobody will even know that the car is "On". The ICE will shut off when the traction battery is sufficiently charged, and the 12V will be recharged off of that silently. That may eventually drain the traction battery to the point where the ICE needs to recharge it again, but those periods should be relatively short and for the most part the car should be silent and look like any other parked car.