Suggestions to maintain 12v battery life

You can simply just disconnect the negative battery terminal that bolts onto the car's body. It's easily accessible and you only need a 10mm socket/wrench. With the negative disconnected, your battery (if in good condition now) should be good after 2 months.

 

Nope.
Not unless you can connect a small solar charger to keep it charged.
And running it without driving isn't a very good idea either.

Regardless of what you do, the battery probably won't last long either........now that it's gone really flat once.

Simply disconnecting it without a float charge might not do the trick either.......depending on how healthy it is.l

 

Disconnect both terminals for long term storage.

 

I was just in the exact same situation.
You can follow my saga over here:
Dead | PriusChat

 

What? Why ??
There is NO reason to disconnect both.......unless you are actually removing the battery to be maintained elsewhere.

 

Why wouldn't you is more the question. There are literally hundreds of reasons why you do this, but the main one is to "completely" isolate of power supply. Have you ever seen batteries "stored" (not charging) with any cable hooked up? It's just one more fastener.

 

i like the solar charger idea.

 

I think the 09 has a way to turn off the sks, that might help because it is always looking for the "key".

 

^^^Right if you have the Smart Key System (SKS) on a Gen2 you have a button under the steering column to turn it off. Then you have to use the real key to open the door and then you can restart the SKS system by pushing the button.

Just did this at the airport last week.

The other thing I like to do (after car sits a week) is warm up car several minutes and keep A/C off for the first 5-10 minutes. After it has sit for a week it seems to be easy to drain the HV battery to purple leaving the airport in a rush with A/C blowing, so I give it until the engine cuts out before I pull out (2 or 3 minutes), and go easy on the A/C.

Re: 12v keep in mind Prius charges up the 12v quite slowly so need some decent hour trips to really get a good charge. For 2-months disconnecting lead seems appropriate.

 

Because it totally, absolutely, completely unnecessary........and somewhat dangerous to be messing with the + post if you don't have to.

You "isolate" a battery by breaking the circuit. One post is all that is necessary to do that.

We are not talking about trying to prevent damage from a lightning strike here.

 

If one thinks it's dangerous to remove the 12 VDC positive cable on a Prius (after the negative cable first of course), them they don't understand even the basics and should not touch the battery to begin with...god forbid ever change one. We are talking about isolating a power supply for "storage" and one more fastener. Do what you want.

 

it would be a pita, but you might consider removing the battery from the car since there's no outlet nearby, and put it somewhere safe with a Battery Tender hooked to it. when you get back at least you know your battery will be fully charged.

 

For those that need it.

http://www.trojanbattery.com/pdf/WP_BatteryCableGuide_0512.pdf

 

There is no "of course". You did not qualify your suggestion the first time.

And that is most of the point. People have defective memories. They might remember you said to take off both cables but forget that you also said to do the negative first........and use their un-insulated box wrench.......in which case it IS dangerous.

It is NOT necessary to disconnect both posts.
With one already off, what exactly do you think you are accomplishing by removing the other ??
Answer: nothing.

You are perfectly free to do whatever stupid thing you want; just don't try and convince others that it is a good idea.