Fixing, Fcking Fedex
Fixing things has been the theme of the weekend. Things started out normally on Saturday which included mowing the grass. As I mowed I thought to myself that we have been lucky so far this summer to not be cursed with long term standing water on the property yet. Only the drainage ditches at the roadside had water in them at this point.
During the day we also drove over to Katie and Daniel’s house to pick up the Prius. Cindy had parked the car there a couple weeks ago while it was in limp mode with a battery error. I needed to get it back to the house in order to take a shot at fixing the hybrid battery pack. I brought my code reader along. In the past it has been my experience that if I clear the codes the car will run normally at least for short period of time. I hit the “clear code” button on my reader and had at it. The car did indeed drive more or less normally, I was monitoring the battery the entire way. It went bad just as I pulled in the driveway, perfect timing. I backed the car up to the garage which is where it will remain until I complete the battery repairs.
Saturday afternoon I tackled another repair, replacing the lidar motor on my Neato botvac. The bot has been down for awhile but I wanted to get it running so we could give it to Katie since I have three other floor vacuuming robots. I actually did a similar repair to Ali’s older Neato XV a year or two ago so I was somewhat familiar with what is involved. I was pleasantly surprised that the procedure was actually easier, significantly easier on the Botvac than it was on the XV. Within 45 minutes I had the repair completed.
During the day Saturday I also stopped at an ATT store. I decided I liked my dirt cheap Umidigi android phone enough that I wanted to add cellular service to it. The reason being when I go out on EUC rides I don’t want to have to carry two phones with me, one to run the android only EUC app and another make phone calls if needed. I could add the phone to my shared data plan for an extra $20 a month. All I had to do was purchase a SIM and had the guy activate it. I did a test phone call and it worked so we called it good to go. I noticed it showed 3G data service but I figured that just had to do with signal level where I was at.
Well as I did more testing I realized I had no cellular data service. I could send text messages (with no pictures) or call, that was it. I did some research online and saw some others had some issues on ATT since this is a Chinese phone, not made for the American market. It seemed like others got it working, however the things they did to resolve it did not work for me. I followed up on Sunday with a support chat with ATT. He spun his wheels for almost a half hour as well until someone there suggested that I check the APN setting on my phone. Once I changed it to ATTNXTGENPHONE I had 4G service and cellular data was flowing, sweet.
Saturday night Cindy and I watched First Man, with Ryan Reynolds. As you may know it is about the moon landing with a more human spin. The movie really focused on Neil Armstrong and his personal backstory. To be honest I thought it focused on the backstory a little too much. The film was almost two and a half hours long and I was ready for it to be over. I’d give it a not bad B.
Sunday morning Cindy and I decided to do the 20 mile DD ride, something we hadn’t tackled in awhile. Cindy was on the Dualtron scooter while I selected my KingSong 18L for the ride. We kept a fast pace for the majority of the time, completing the entire trip in 70 minutes. It was fun, fast, and hot as hell.
So mid-afternoon Sunday I finally decided to jump into the Prius battery project. Even though I have watched a bunch of videos on the process, I still was nervous about it. Trying to fix a a Prius battery pack is no small undertaking. I used the Android phone, a bluetooth ODB2 adapter, and an app called Torque Pro to get individual cell readings of the pack. Based on what I saw, bank three was the problem which had a voltage level about 1.5 below the rest. Each bank is made of two cells that meant that either cell 5 or 6 was bad.
So now the fun part began, removing the hybrid battery unit. It is located under rear seat. In order to get it out of there you basically have to rip out everything in the rear of the car. It isn’t technically difficult but there are a lot of things to remove which I tried to pile in a semi-organized way in the garage. In about an hour I was able to lug the 100 pound+ battery pack onto a table in the garage.
Once I cracked open the case I was presented with the 28 individual cells that are wired together in series. There is very high current potential there so I was very careful as I removed the individual bus bars that connect each cell together, wearing eye protection and leather gloves. I immediately noticed the copper bus bars were badly corroded. I initially was just going to clean them and reinstall but I decided instead to buy a new set of nickel plated bars which resist corrosion.
Once the bars were off I could safely start checking cell voltages. Just as the Torque app showed, bank three was the problem. One of the two batteries only showed 7 volts. Every other battery in the pack was at 8.5 or 8.6 volts. When I removed the bad cell from the pack I could see the sides of it were visibly swollen, another sign of battery failure.
The replacement cell that I bought was at 8 volts. It was recommended that I charge that cell to 8.5 volts as well to keep the pack as balanced as possible. Once the cell is installed the car battery management system should be able to handle the rest. So what you see in the picture was my stopping point. I can’t do much more before the new bus bars arrive which should be by the end of the week. The timing works out since I am away at a conference Tues-Thursday.
Remember what I said about being happy the property was mostly dry on Saturday? Well Sunday afternoon as I was working on the battery the skies opened up, dumping several inches of rain in the process. The lakes have now returned, and it sucks.
So I was excitedly looking forward to the delivery of my next PEV which was supposed to come via FedEx by end of business today. I have had a really shitty experience when it comes to FedEx and PEV deliveries. The majority of the time they miss their promised dates and I have to track them down myself. Once again the delay came from the central Florida region, which is always the case. The packages normally travel across the country at a rapid clip, hit central Florida and then stop. It frustrates the hell out of me. I am trying to see if there is any way I can pick it up at the Fort Myers depot after work but I doubt it.
As I mentioned earlier I have an odd week, working a normal day today, Tues-Thurs at a conference in Orlando and then back to the office for one more day prior to taking the following week off. I could get used to this schedule.