How to fix a $4,000 hybrid battery problem with vinegar and

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How to fix a $4,000 hybrid battery problem with vinegar and baking soda
Skilled Driver Takes Apart Camry Hybrid Battery For DIY Fix

Jonathon Ramsey
This is one of those 'Don't try this at home if you don't know what you're doing' DIY tales. Two weeks after imgur user "scoodidabop" bought a used Toyota Camry Hybrid with no warranty, he got the Christmas Tree dash display with warnings like "Check VSC System," "Check Hybrid System," and the Check Engine light. After some Internet sleuthing he figured it could be a faulty brake actuator, assuming the hybrid system warning was a false alarm. But it wasn't the actuator, it was the battery, a Toyota dealer telling him that his battery had "gone bad," and he'd need $4,457 to replace it.

Then he had a brainstorm: it could be one of the cells that's gone bad, not the whole battery. Scoodidabop has some experience as an electrician, so he figured he could test it and replace any bad cells for about $45 apiece. He removed the battery unit from the trunk and over the course of two hours tested all 68 cells four times. He found nothing wrong. So he devised another type of test and checked every cell again. He couldn't find a problem with any of them.

Turns out the problem wasn't in the cells, but with the dirty and corroded copper connectors at the ends of the high-voltage cables. He pulled the 34 connectors and their steel nuts, soaked them in vinegar, gave them a light steel wool scrub, soaked them in baking soda and water to counteract the vinegar, applied an anticorrosive and reinstalled them. That took an hour. When he replaced the battery, the warning lights had all gone out and the battery worked perfectly. Skill level: experience. Cost: less than $10. Perhaps it's time for hybrids to be able to test their own cells individually. Dealers, too.

Excellent! Make sure to read the comments to the blog also. Very interesting story about another electrical fix and dealer procedures.

Well, I did this exact same procedure on a 2002 Toyota Prius. Actually, I went a bit further. I used a dremel with a wire brush to clean up the contacts because it was taking too long with vinegar. When I put that thing back together it looked brand new! But it still didn't work. I also checked every cell individually and even tried charging them up using a RC battery charger. Some of the cells would hold a charge, some wouldn't. I tried replacing a few cells, but still couldn't get the car to start. The engine would spin for about 5 seconds, and not nearly as fast as it SHOULD be spinning on a start, and eventually ran out of juice and died. The cells just couldn't hold enough power because they had leaked much of their electrolyte out.

Eventually I replaced the entire battery pack for $1,900 for a brand new pack and the car started right up. However, it is worth mentioning that I found out later that it was indeed possible to repair those cells. It would have required drilling a hole and injecting new electrolyte into them and sealing them back. There are some hybrid battery refurbishing companies that are doing just that now.

The joys of "replace assembly" procedures.

I remember running into this years ago when the starter on my mother's car started to fail. It was one of the Dodge "K" cars and for some reason the price of a new starter was beyond outrageous -- something like $500 (in 1980's dollars!). I think I got a grudging quote of $400 for a remanufactured one. I called all over town. Remember when we used to have to do that?

So I pulled out the starter and disassembled it. The only problem was that one of the main contactors had eroded. Conveniently, the arc-shaped worn spot was an exact fit for a penny. So I cut part of a penny (the old copper-style), brazed it onto the contact block, filed it flat and that was that. No problems for the 5 years she kept that car.

I did a similar thing to my 1982 Honda Civic sedan. The starter brushes were very worn, so the starter worked intermittently. When I saw how the brushes were worn in an arc, I just rotated them 90* and put them back in. The starter still worked fine when I sold the car at ~200,000 miles.

I love the "make do and mend" mentality. People have truly lost that these days.

I still have a number of older Dell workstations in service. These were the ones that typically suffered motherboard failures stemming from the Great Stolen Formula Capacitor Crisis of a few years ago:

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2010/jun/29/dell-problems-capacitors" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Since a great many capacitors trend towards failure on these boards at around the same time (it's not uncommon to pull a board and see a half-dozen or more bulging, if not already split), our usual solution is to toss the board and buy a refurb, which can generally be had off eBay for around $25.

The other day a computer came in with symptoms that are very typical of bad capacitors, but only a single bulging capacitor was evident. In this instance, since we didn't already have a replacement board to hand, I simply desoldered an OK looking capacitor of the same value from a board that we had already consigned to the junk pile and soldered it in place of the bulging one causing the problem. User's workstation was back in service within the hour and with zero cost (other than labor). :mrgreen:

mwalsh said:

I still have a number of older Dell workstations in service. These were the ones that typically suffered motherboard failures stemming from the Great Stolen Formula Capacitor Crisis of a few years ago:

Click to expand...

I'm all too familiar with that. I can't tell you how many Dell and Compaq computers I replaced caps on, as well as LCD monitors and Apple iMac G5 systems.

Also, there is already a company out there refurbishing Prius battery cells. I would imagine in time businesses will pop up doing the same for Nissan battery packs.