Jump starter device & procedure

I have a GB70 and you're not going to use it up in the front of the car easily unless you get an adapter that comes out the front and converts it to the 12 volt cigarette lighter affair and you can plug it into the cars cigarette lighter power thingy and back feed it that way. But why are we doing this we don't want to replace the 12 volt and the trunk I know their pricey but.

 

Video procedure here, NoCo cables will be long enough. GB40 only $20 more than GB20.

 

On my GB70 which is the big 2000 milliamps or whatever the heck it is it's the bigger of them what happens is the clamps keep slipping off they don't like being up front if I take something of metal clamp and clamp it to that red piece in the fuse box and then put the noko clamp on that it'll stay clamped a lot better

 

Best place to attach is the jumppoint of course and for the ground use the bare bolt right above it that’s one of the 3 strut bolts.
Used both of those for years using a charger for remedial battery maintenance,

Be aware the jump point is a flat metal tang mounted vertically so you can attach a jaw.

 

Oops didn’t watch the video he’s using the same ground bolt.

 

In my Prius v, there is a thin pocket or slot just below the Power port and USB. So I bought a very this jump pack so it fits there and is being charged whenever the car is Ready. (Any USB device plugged into the jump pack works all the time, which the Prius lacks)

This is not a 'better' jump pack, but it fits my car better.

stock photo of slot

 

Picked up a GB 20 on prime day for 50 bucks, it has a100 page safety and warranty manual in every conceivable language, but no instruction manual.
You have to go to the website for that

 

A manual to do what usually it comes with this big thick thing that's in about 20 languages Ihsve a copy that came e gb70. Chg w USB . Connect to battery . And if you want don't do anything else just stare at the stupid thing it will read battery and power up all by itself lights sequence and steady and green displayed crank er.

 

The littlest one, GB10, is adequate for a Prius.

 

I don't know from Noco model numbers, but the jump pack I currently have holds 38.4 watthours, and before it I had a slightly smaller one at around 30 Wh.

I don't pay much attention to the big flashy numbers for peak current (hundreds of amps? thousands of amps? you need tens of amps to start a Prius), as I think the total stored energy, watthour figure is more relevant. Sometimes the watthour number is much harder to find on the packaging (sometimes not on the outer packaging at all).

My 30 to 38 Wh units have no trouble starting a Prius, except in the case where the Prius's 12-volt battery is extremely discharged. An extremely discharged car battery can suck all 38.4 Wh out of a jump pack in less time than it takes me to duck in the driver's door and try to push the power button. Result is then a fully-discharged jump pack and a car that's still not started.

When the situation is one where I think that might happen, I disconnect the car battery first, then use the jump pack to get to READY (no problem then), and then reconnect the dead car battery and let the car charge it.

In gen 3 that's quite easy to do (you can disconnect the car battery by unplugging a fat white connector right in the underhood fuse box). In gen 2 it's less convenient (there's an unpluggable battery connector, but it's buried in back where the battery is). But it can still be worth doing if you're in a situation where a drained jump pack would be really inconvenient.

 

that's why i bought this one instead of the GB 10, it has an override button for batteries discharged below 2.something volts

 

yes, the big thick thing in 200 languages has one page of warranty and warnings, no istructions.
i was just looking for the charging and jumping instructions, thanks tom.
i am surprised it has usb charging, and not 120v.

 

Yes, you definitely need one with such an override button to be able to jump with the car battery disconnected—otherwise, of course, it will see zero volts and refuse to jump.

Another thing you can do with such an override button is push it and try to jump the car while the car battery is still connected and really below 2.something volts. But that's the kind of situation that's most likely to slurp all the charge out of the jump pack in the time it takes you to move from pushing the override button to pushing the power button, and leave you with a fully-discharged jump pack and a car that still needs a jump.

So my rule is to disconnect the car battery first in a situation like that.

(Not so with conventional cars: conventional alternators / voltage regulators needed the car battery connected at all times.)

 

I was surprised that first time I boosted a completely flat AGM battery and saw how much current it could accept.

A conventional lead acid wet cell has very high internal resistance when it's discharged - completely opposite.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

i never considered this. kind of a pain, especially if someone else has your car and trying to use it.
i'll have to put the necessary tools with it to disconnect the battery.
how big a pack would you need to be capable of jumping a flat battery without disconnecting?

 

of course, the noco comes with the new usb connectors that don't fit my computer or 120v adapters.
back to amazon for an adapter

 

The noco is USB micro still ? I just got a non noco gimfoom is brand I think it's like the noco 150 big ole thing . Cost me like 84 bux compared to 300 for the noco . I've not pulled it down yet jumping big diesels . I figured an ice car with all the accessories left on in the ignition turned off would be a lot more draw than pushing start button on any Prius. But eh who knows.

 

Well, if you're talking about a gen 3 plug-in like your profile says, the "necessary tools" are one hand with a finger and an opposable thumb. You squeeze the connector tab on the fat white cable in the underhood fuse box and pull the connector out, and the battery is disconnected.

Back in gen 2, it was more effort, because you'd have to dig out whatever cargo you had in the back, and lift up the deck board and the storage tray to see the battery, but once you get there, once again there is a fat cable with a squeeze-and-pull connector and poof, the battery is disconnected.* I don't know the exact story for later gens.

Well, the Prius batteries tend to be around 45 amp-hours or, at 12 volts, 540 watthours. So my little 38.4 watthour jump pack is about a fourteenth of that, and clearly that's small enough to disappear quickly into the drained battery and not make much of a difference.

Just what fraction of 540 watthours would be enough to dependably make a difference, I don't know. Half? A third? A quarter? Those would suggest a pack anywhere from a few times to several times the weight and bulk of mine.



* that said, while I've used this technique multiple times with success in gen 3 and gen 1, I'm not sure I've done it in gen 2. Gen 2 is reported to throw errors if its remote-sensed voltage reading seems suspicious—which it will if the cable is unplugged—so that might throw a wrench in the routine for gen 2.