Recorded, All Five, Spoke too soon
Yesterday I participated in a meeting regarding a new government center that is going to be built within the next couple years. The meeting had to do with selecting companies involved in the build. This was a “public” meeting which meant that it had to be recorded for public record. They had microphones hanging from the ceiling above the table for that very purpose. It was my first time participating in that sort of environment so it was a good experience and something I think I will be doing more of in the future as this project, the largest one we have ever done, continues to move forward.
Last night I again spent a good chunk of time in the hobby room both assembling completed 3D prints and starting new ones. When I went to bed I had five of the six printers churning away. I also completed a hot end swap on my CR10S pro. Doing so made me decide to finally install the inductive leveling probe I have had sitting in the room for months. Hopefully I do so in the next few days. The capacitive probe the printer comes with is rather inconsistent which causes issues with good first layer performance.
In one of the videos I posted over the weekend I briefly talked about the Prius battery replacement project and how I was happy that the car is still running well a month or two later. Well right on cue I get a picture sent to from Cindy of the red triangle of death popping back on the dashboard of the car, likely indicating another cell in the battery pack is going bad.
I knew this was a possibility and have read others warn that individual cell replacement is a whack-a-mole game, you replace one bad one and another fails. Sure I could repeat the same process as last time, identify which cell is bad, pull the entire pack out of the car, rip into it, replace the bad cell and reverse the process. The problem is this process is long, tedious and something that I don’t want to include in my regular list of chores. I told Cindy that my recommendation was for Katie to buy the kit I investigated before that uses brand new and better than stock cells. It has a two year warranty and would likely be the last battery pack the car ever needs before other things start falling apart. I told her I would be willing to put in the labor to get it installed.
The kids other options are going from driving the 50MPG Prius to the 15 or less MPG Dodge Ram truck which is probably the least baby friendly vehicle you can imagine, or buying another vehicle. A four to six year car payment will very quickly be a budget buster, much more so than replacing the pack. We will see how it all shakes out.