I bought a 2007 sight unseen for way too much money and finally my luck ran out. Bad hybrid battery. To make matters worse I can't even open the lift gate. The little silver thing on the inside is stiff and it won't rotate to open the door. I just tried it on my daily to make sure I have the idea correct and it opens no problem. How am I going to get the liftgate open if the manual lever doesn't work?? To make matters worse I cannot get the Dr. Prius app on my iphone to work with my obd reader even though I specifically bought the reader dr. prius app told me to use. I have an old galaxy s7 burner with the dr. prius app but haven't got it to work yet either. Assuming I can't get the app to work is there a way to manually measure voltages on the cells to find the culprit cell once I have it on the bench? Man, not off to a good start with this one.
From the inside near the hatch latch there is a little silver tab that if you lift up it will open the hatch. In theory. It's like my silver little thing is already stuck up and not actuating whatever it is supposed to release. No go with the 12v. The switch is in rough shape from heat damage, but it does try to do something. You can hear it make a clunking sound, but the hatch is still firmly shut. I got the Dr. Prius app to work at least. What does this tell us about the battery? To the layman obviously it appears modules #3, 5, & 8 are different. Possible to swap the 6 cells out and be good? I know there are concepts of charging and balancing the cells that I know nothing about, and I obviously need to do a lot more research on my own. Just wondering if someone can point me in the right directions, pointers etc. I have 2 bad hybrid battery assemblies, possible to scrounge together all the good cells from those? Drawback is they were known to be bad packs already and I'm sure sitting for a couple years hasn't fixed them. Although I can't even dig into this HV battery fiasco if I can't lift the gate....
On a gen2 the rear latch motor is in the floor. As a result you pull the hatch floor up to access the manual release. Remove cover of latch motor Once I had to move the manual release while jiggling the hatch door from the inside. There may be a way to unbolt the latch motor from that same access. Or if push came to shove pull out the angle grinder and try to cut off the strike.
what you see on Dr Prius are blocks not "cells", a block has 2 "modules" and this is the one where you can buy elsewhere and swap/replace. Each module has 6 cells which are not replaceable. If you drive it long enough it will throw a code like "Block XX is getting weak" which mean it's voltage difference from other blocks is greater than .3v, looking at your graphs you have a voltage difference of 2v which is really high. Swapping modules will work but it also depends on your luck on how you reconditioned or swap the modules. They need to be at the same capacity (balanced) and sometimes it will last for a day, a week, a month or years but don't expect something long term.. worst if it could leave you on the side of the road for longer trips.
If electrically it clunks but doesn't unlatch, and moving the lever (that you know from another car is the right lever) doesn't unlatch, it would seem something has failed in the latch. That doesn't seem like a common issue anyone else here would have advice about. It'll be a challenge. You may have to look for ways to carefully destroy the latch or the strike without destroying what's nearby.
Any sign the hatch or nearby areas are or were bent? Pretty common for hatches, trunks, and doors to refuse to open if they are bent enough that it puts force on the release mechanism. If it sounds like the release is trying to open when 12V is present perhaps just try prying the hatch open "gently" when the latch should be open. Bang on it a bit. Push outward at the bottom, inward at the bottom, left or right near the bottom.. Pry up from the bottom, it might just be glued shut because the rubber seal stuck the hatch to the body. If still no go, take apart the panels around that area on the other Prius and see if there is some obvious way to disengage the latch arm with minimal mayhem. As in, find the best place to cut. Has the OP tried a little "persuasion" on the manual release lever? If it is in the "latched" position perhaps a small crowbar across a block of wood can force it up?
You're gonna have to pull as much stuff out of the back of the car as possible to get better access to the metal clip so you can put way more force on it to get it open.
Thanks a ton to everyone who chimed in. Reading all your posts before I work on it again helps me get my head in the right place. I took out the 3 bolts holding in the black latch mechanism to the car (not easy with the gate closed) and then was able to crowbar it out of there. Once the gate was finally open, one could easily finger it from the other side and it released the strike. I think the problem was rear end collision damage pushed on it just enough the mechanism ceased to function normally. Unfortunately the crowbar removal wasn't without collateral damage and now the nest of the car frame is in pretty bad shape where that black latch mechanism tucks in. Will make securing the 3 bolts, alignment and latching function certainly difficult upon reassembly Yet I now have to turn my attention to figuring out how to split and fix the hybrid battery. Thanks for the pointers on that front, I'll do what I can to figure it out and let you guys know if I have any questions.
The sheet metal the latch bolts to is easy to hammer back in place after rear end collision damage if its not too significant.
Looking for advice. Thought about this ad nauseam lately, especially while having time charging modules. This is likely the last time I buy a Prius sight unseen. I paid $5400 for this 2007 with 150k miles on it (KBB is only $5k but it's a Cali car now in the rust belt - something to be said for that around here.) I think I can fix everything else on it without any pocket costs. It has smart key and back up camera. I swapped out the 3 bad modules. My source was a 3 years on the bench bad donor pack with many dead modules. I only had a 21v 0.1a vacuum charger so my charging was brutally slow. I did rudimentary load testing on 6 from the donor pack and took the best 3. I "balanced" via parallel wiring overnight. The car now runs and drives fine, although I can still see the same weak 3 blocks in Dr. Prius, just not as extreme and not enough to trip any codes yet. Not sure what to do with this. Option 1: Sell the car AS IS and try to get $5400 out of it. Pros: I wouldn't lose any money and I could wash my hands of it relatively quickly Cons: I would have to put my name on a pile of shit. What if the pack fails soon after I sell it? Now granted I bought said pile of shit myself, and rather than crying I decided to do something about that. But normal people aren't prius folks. We have options, they don't. Option 2: Buy new OEM Toyota pack, put it in my 09 daily, and take my 2018 OEM pack and put it in this 07 car before I sell it Pros: I would get a brand new pack myself, and I could put my name on something I'm confident would last. I still have the receipt for my 2018 OEM pack. Cons: Brutally expensive/sunk cost fallacy. My 2018 pack probably has plenty of life remaining Even with the 2018 OEM pack as a selling point, I feel it would be very hard to get $7400 for the 07. Although am I crazy? 150k miles, no rust, 2018 OEM pack... sounds like a very sweet deal and very rare deal to me. Just wonder if I'm deluding myself on these numbers Option 3: Buy a wrecked gen 4 and swap the pack from it or try to source a stand alone gen 4 pack from a junkyard Pros: It could be a reliable solution and something I could put my name on for not as much money. Cons: Stand alone packs = total crapshoot. How could one guarantee anything? If buying a wrecked gen 4 just for the pack, how much overhead would one incur? Fees, tax, stuck parting out the rest, etc. Not sure of the math either. Junkyard pack for approx $800. Could I sell the 07 for $6500 with a gen 4 pack?
