Hey guys! ChrisFix here, and today
I'm going to show you the entire process
of how to replace a hybrid battery. And in this case,
we're going to be working on my Generation 3 Prius. So this video will cover
from 2010 to 2015, and this is my 2013 Prius
I just purchased. I found it on AutoTempest
for $2700 because, well,
it has a bad hybrid battery. And hopefully,
when we're done with this, the car will be fixed
and it'll be worth about $8000, leaving us room
for a healthy profit. Now, this Generation 3 Priuses
are getting up there in age and mileage,
and that's causing these batteries to fail.
And when they do fail, that is very expensive. And just to give you an idea,
I've got a quote from a local dealership
to replace the hybrid battery and it would cost $4600. So we're talking
a lot of money here. So instead, we're going
to be installing an aftermarket battery pack
from Electron Automotive. This is about $2200,
saving us $1000 over OEM, plus we're going
to be doing this with common hand tools ourselves,
saving us $1000 in labor, so over $2000 saved
by doing this ourselves. And the best thing is,
this is an upgraded battery pack. So this battery pack
has more power than OEM, and also, when you're using
the regenerative breaking, this charges up quicker. Plus, we have a 3-year
45,000 mile warranty versus the OEM
1-year 12,000 mile warranty. Now the most important thing
when getting an aftermarket battery pack is making sure
you get a high quality one. And I've actually used
this company before. Check this out. This right here
is the Prius I replaced the hybrid battery on
over four years ago I made a video on. It's a Gen 2 Prius,
so 2004 to 2009, just in case you guys
had this year Prius. I'll put a link
in the description to that video below. And the reason
why I asked the owner to bring the car by real quick
is because the proof is in the pudding. This is a daily driver
for over four years, no hybrid battery issues. It's been fixed
and this car is a great example of that. So I've used this company before
with good results and they have
a full service shop out in California,
which is why I'm comfortable recommending them
to you guys. So I want to thank them
for supporting the video and making these high quality
battery packs that don't break the bank
for a bunch of different hybrid cars. That way, we could fix
these cars instead of junking them. And I'm going to show you
how to do that right now. So all these tools
and products I used in this video will be linked down
in the description, that way you could easily
find it. Let's grab our safety glasses
and get them on and let's go get started. Now before you go buy
an expensive battery pack, let me show you real quick
how to tell if your battery's bad. Now, the good thing
about the Prius is it clearly lets you know
that the battery is bad. So if we go to starter up
and take a look at the dashboard, you could see it comes up
right away to check the hybrid system. Additionally, you'll notice
that the fuel economy will go down. Right now, I'm only getting
about 30 MPG, but with the new battery,
I bet we could get over 60. And we'll test out that bet
at the end of the video. And finally, the best
for sure way to know that you have a bad battery
is to plug in an OBD-II scanner like this,
that way we could scan the computer. So under the steering wheel,
you could plug in the scanner into this port right here. And since this car
is already turned on, just open up the app
on the phone and scan the codes. And here are the results
of the scan. If we look down
at the permanent codes, we have P0A80,
that says to replace the hybrid battery, P3011, saying Block 1
is weak, and P3013, saying Block 3
is weak. So if you see codes like this,
you could be pretty confident that your battery needs
to be replaced. So now we know for sure
the hybrid battery is bad. Let's shut the engine off
and let's replace it. Now, the hybrid battery
is located in the rear of the car, so we're going
to be working out the trunk. So let's pop that out open. And just to give you an idea,
the hybrid battery is located right about here. So let me show you
how to easily get to it. First, let's remove
the trunk liner, then we can remove
the floor lid, followed by the cargo tray. And just like that,
you could already see our hybrid battery right here. Now we do have to remove
a couple of other things to get to the full battery. But before we do anything else,
once I could see this orange plug,
this is the safety plug, I like to remove it. So all you have to do
to remove it, pull that out,
turn the lever, and that comes right out
just like that. This safety plug kills
the voltage when it's removed, so now the battery is safe
to work on. That's why I like to remove it
right away. So with that removed,
now let's go and disconnect
the 12V battery. So pop this tray out,
as well as this little side panel to get access to the battery. Now I'm using a 10mm wrench
to loosen up the negative cable. And a ratcheting wrench
works great here. And with this loose,
we could disconnect it from the battery
and tuck it away so it won't touch
the negative terminal. So with our battery
disconnected, now we could come
to the other side and remove
these plastic trim pieces. So remove the lid,
and then there's a plastic nut you could unscrew by hand,
and then this tray comes right out. With that out,
now let's head over to the backseats
and remove the privacy shade. This just pops out. Good. And then, fold down
both of your seats. And that quickly,
we almost have access to our battery. There are only two pieces left
that we need to remove. We have this interior piece
right here which we'll get
our fingers under and pop up. But before we do that,
there is a hidden bolt right about here. I'll show you how
to get that out. And then we have
our side interior piece, which we also want
to remove so we could get
to the side of the battery. So let's get
this top piece off first, and to do that,
come around to the passenger side here,
pop that door open, and let me show you
where that hidden bolt is right here. And this is a 10mm bolt,
so let's break this loose, and then loosen it
the rest of the way by hand. Good. So now
with our rear bolt removed, we could come back around
to the rear of the car and we could pop
this plastic trim piece out. Now the trick here
is to get your fingers under the plastic and you want
one good strong pull. Just like that. Perfect. So now you could clearly see
the battery and you could also see
why I'm saying we should remove this side panel here. It gets in the way. So to remove
this side panel, we're going to sneak around
to the passenger side and we need to remove
this right here. And to do that,
it's going to be hard to see, but you have to press down
on the seat cushion and there is a bolt down there
that you need to remove. Now, this is a 12mm
so get a socket on there with an extension, break it loose,
and carefully remove it the rest of the way
so you don't drop it behind the seat. Good. So now what we're going
to do to remove this piece right here with the vent,
we're going to lift upwards like this, and then we're going
to pull this part at the top outwards
like that, and this comes right out. So with the trim piece removed,
you could see we have a filter right here. This is very important. If you have a Prius,
check to see if you have this filter. Not every Prius
has this filter. And if you don't,
all this stuff that got caught up here
will end up going into your electric fan
and it could cause your battery to overheat. If your battery overheats,
it could go bad. That's expensive. This is cheap. So if you have a Prius,
even if your battery's not bad, make sure you check and see
if you have a filter. They didn't all come
with filters. If you don't have a filter,
I'll put a link in the description
to where you could find one. It's inexpensive
and could save you a ton of money
'cause you don't want your battery getting hot. And if you do have
a filter already, it's worth checking
to make sure it's not clogged up like this one. That could also cause
your battery to run hot. So let's clean it. Now on the side of the filter
is a little tab, so just pull the housing off
the tab, and then you could carefully pry
the filter out, making sure you don't shake
the dust off the filter. Now to clean the filter,
just use some running water. And it would actually be better
if I flip this around and hit it from the other side. And now you could see
all the dust is coming right off, no problem. And once this is clean,
just give it a good shake to get all the water off,
and we're ready to install our clean filter. So just reinstall it
the same way it came out. And remember on the side
of the housing, there is a hole. Just get that filter tab
into the hole. And now the clean filter
is installed. Beautiful! So with that filter
nice and clean, we could come around
to the back, and now we could remove
our side trim piece. And to get that off,
first, we need to pop off this trim piece. So with two hands,
give it one big pull. Beautiful. And now we could remove
our side panel, and there are four fasteners
holding this in. We have one right down here,
we have one right there, we have one at the seatbelt,
and we have one right there. So let's get those removed. So let's start
at the tie down right here and loosen this 10mm bolt
and remove it the rest of the way
by hand. Then, right above that
is the cargo net tie down which could be removed
with a Phillips head screwdriver. And with that removed,
let's remove the fastener over here under the seatbelt. And just get a small
flathead screwdriver into the hole here
and pry it out like so. And now,
this just comes right out. And finally,
the last fastener is this tie down right here. So we'll break
this 10mm bolt loose. Good. And then, we could
loosen it the rest of the way and remove it. Beautiful. And with
all four fasteners removed, now we could pop
this panel out, and we're going to start
popping it out from this side right here. So now we just have
to peel back this weather stripping
and just set it off to the side. And that leaves us
a little gap here we could work
our fingers behind. You just want to get
your finger right on the plastic clip
and pop it out. So that's the plastic clip
right there I was telling you
to get your fingers on so you're pulling
on the actual plastic and not on this material
because you could rip it off. You could actually see
the glue from another clip that's supposed
to be right there. Somebody on this
and rip that clip off. I actually saw
that clip earlier. And you could see,
somebody already has been in here. I also noticed on the battery
there is a sticker or decal or something or tape,
whatever this is, that's not normally there
from the factory. So I think somebody
might have been inside this battery already. I'm not concerned
because we're replacing all the internals. So we're going
to have basically a brand new battery
with new cells. But I'm curious to see
what's inside, so let's finish up
removing the side panel. Now just work your way
along the top of this panel, popping it out as you go. For the seatbelt,
you could lift this up and the seatbelt
slides right out. And now, this panel
could come out completely. And with that removed,
now we have plenty of room to get to the battery
and disconnect it. But before we remove
the battery, I want to epoxy
this plastic piece back on to our interior trim piece,
that way we give our epoxy time to cure And by time we have
to install this, it'll be good to go. So I'm using
a strong two-part epoxy. And always use
a non-porous surface to mix this in. Then you just push out
the amount you need, like that, and mix it together
real quick until it's one uniform color,
which takes about 10 seconds at most. Now we want to get
this on here right away because this hardens
pretty quickly. So work the epoxy
into the material and sprea it out like so. And you can make out
the original orientation of the clip on the panel. So let me get this
on the same position, and then push it into place. And finally, clamp this down
to hold it tight against the material
for a good strong cure. So as we let that cure,
let's go back over to the car and disconnect
the hybrid battery, and we'll start right
on this side. So let's remove
this black vent, and to do that,
we need to remove this clip right here. So get your panel clip pliers
and work it under the clip, and then pry up
until it pops out. Good. And now, we could remove
the vent from the battery. Next, we have
this white plastic piece that needs to be removed,
and there's a white clip right here. So push the plastic
off the clip, and then there's
another clip down here so just give this
a good yank and it'll come right off. Good. So now we have
five 10mm nuts that we need to remove
from this cover. So let's remove
these two nuts right here. And then, the last three
are deep in here, so you're going to need
to use an extension to loosen them. And to remove the nut
all the way down here, a stick magnet
makes this really easy. So loosen the nut
on the other side and use the stick magnet
to easily remove it. And then finally,
there's one last nut right here. So let's remove that. And all that's left
is this right here, and this orange fastener
specially designed to keep you safe. It cannot be removed
without a special tool. I'll show you that
in a second. The reason being
is underneath this cover are exposed wires. So they don't want you
opening up this cover without your safety plug
removed. Remember, this is
what we removed in the beginning of the video,
that way it kills all the voltage
to the battery. And if you look
at the end of the safety plug right there, you could see
there's a peg. Well, that peg fits
right into that hole, that way we could remove
the safety fastener. So you could see
it fits just like that, then you give it
about a quarter of a turn and it pops open, and then you could remove
that fastener. So that's a really good design
to make sure that the safety plug is removed
before you remove this cover. And now's probably
a good time for me to explain how I remember where to put
all these different fasteners, the nuts, the bolts,
when I go to reinstall them because there's a bunch. This is just the beginning
and we already have a bunch. Well, the easiest way
is to get a Ziploc bag with a note card in it
and just label everything. You could see
I have five 10mm nuts and one orange fastener, and then I'll put it
right in this bag. And then, now I know
for sure when I go to reinstall everything
where this goes. It just makes
the whole process foolproof. So now we could remove
our cover, and that gives us access
to our battery junction box which is all the electronics
for our battery. And the only thing we need
to touch in here right now are these two wires. So these two wires take
the high voltage from our battery
and bring it to the inverter which is in the engine bay, and that powers
the electric motor. Now normally,
these two wires have a lot of voltage going
through them, but that's only
when the car's on and when our safety plug
is plugged in. You could see
with the safety plug removed, it opens the circuit here
so there's no voltage flowing through any of this. So this is a very safe design. And just in case you want
a little bit of extra piece of mind to make sure
there's no voltage going through these wires
before you touch them, you could grab your multimeter
and you could take your negative lead right here,
touch it to the negative side, you could take
your positive lead right here, touch it to the positive side,
and you could see there are no volts at all
running through the system. So we are safe to disconnect
these two wires. So break both
of these 10mm nuts loose with the ratchet, then we could remove
both of these the rest of the way by hand, and then we could remove
the wires. And don't worry
about the ends here, they could touch metal
without any problem since there's no power
to them. So tuck them out
of the way like that, and then get these two nuts
back on the studs, that way we don't lost them. So with our high voltage wires
disconnected and tucked off to the side,
next we want to remove this black duct work
that connects to our fan here, that way it's easier
to remove the battery. There's also a couple
of wires that go over here that we need to pop off
and set off to the side, and then we have some wires
with pigtails that we could disconnect,
and then we're able to remove our battery. Now to remove this ducting,
you need to pop off this clip right here,
so get in there and pry it apart, and then this comes
right out like that. Next, we have
two retaining clips right here. So let's pop these out
and this just holds the wiring to the case. And then, next clip
right here has a little tab that you pry outwards, and then that clip
could slide right off like that. And finally,
there's one more clip down here holding in
this wire. And the easiest way
to remove this is to grab a needle nose pliers
and just squeeze the two ends of the clip,
and that makes it pop out a lot easier. So with these wires removed
from the case, now let's disconnect them
from the connectors. And all you need to do
is press in this little tab and pull it right out. Same with the connector here, and this last connector here. Good. So with those wires removed,
all that's holding this battery in are six bolts and we could
quickly remove them. There's two in the front,
there's one right there, and there's one right there. There's two in this corner,
and then there's two in that corner. So let's get these bolts removed
and get this battery out. So all of these
are 12mm bolts, and they're in there
pretty good. So you're going to need
a little more leverage. There we go. So break it loose,
and then you could remove it the rest of the way by hand. Then, the next bolt
is right here. So break that loose. And now we could remove it
the rest of the way by hand. Now, the next two bolts
are in the back corner here. And these are the two bolts
we need to remove. And if you look here,
this one also holds the rear seat down
and the bolt is different than that one,
so just keep that in mind for when we go
and reinstall these later on. And again, these are both
12mm bolts. So remove them all the way. And you could see,
the shorter one is the one that goes
into the backseat bracket right down here. So with these two bolts removed,
let's come over to the other corner and get
these last two bolts removed. Again, both of these
are 12mm and an extension
makes it easier to get down here. And to remove them,
a stick magnet works wonders because there isn't a lot
of room to get your hands down here. Now we have our last bolt
right here. Let's get that bolt out. Good. Now, the battery
is completely disconnected so let's remove it,
and I'm going to show you how to do this
with just one person. First, let's get all six
of those bolts we just removed and put them
in a labeled bag. I'm calling these
the battery hold-down bolts. Good. And a little trick is to put
some cardboard down, that way it's easy
to slide the battery out. So I'll start
on the fan side of the battery and pull it out a little bit. Then, go to the other side
and pull it out a little more. Now if you have
a friend around, this is where they could
help you lift this 90lbs battery. But as you could see,
you could do this on your own if you really need to. All right. So with our old battery removed,
now we just need to remove this cover.
Under here are all the old cells
that we'll pull out and replace with our nice
brand new cells. Once the new cells back in,
we'll wire it back up, we'll put the cover back on
and we could get this installed. Now real quick,
I do want to mention, they sell
this entire battery pack with brand new cells
preinstalled, that way you don't have
to open it up and replace the cells yourself. It does cost more money
about $500 more, but it is an option
just in case you're uncomfortable
with digging into the battery and swapping out the cells. Now, it's not difficult to do, I'm about to show you
how to do it right now so you could save yourself
that $500. So there are four nuts
on this side of the case that need to be removed. All of these are 10mm nuts,
so remove them completely. Now real quick,
something that I noticed that I want to mention,
right here is a hole and in this hole should be
one of these orange safety fasteners, but in this case,
it isn't 'cause I think somebody's been
in this battery and they forgot
to reinstall it. So in your battery,
if it hasn't been touched, you will find one
of these safety fasteners right here. You already know how
to remove this so just pop it out. Good. And with
those four nuts removed, now we could move
to the other side of the battery and remove
the other four nuts. So that's one,
that's two, three, and four. And now we can remove
the cover. Okay. So with
the cover removed, you could actually see
each individual cell that makes
the entire hybrid battery. That's pretty cool. Now what we're going
to do next is remove the busbar. So there's one on this side
and there is one on this side. So let me show you
how to get those off. So just grab
a small flathead screwdriver and just pry it at the top
like that and it should come right off. So work your way down
the battery and remove all the covers. So with the covers removed,
you could see each individual nut
that holds the busbar onto each individual
battery cell, and we have to remove
all of those. And if you have power tools,
now is the time to use them because you could buzz off
all these nuts really quickly with this. But I know not everybody
has power tools, so I'm going to be using
good old common hand tools to show you could get it done
with just this. So let's remove
all 28 8mm nuts. And again,
if you have power tools, use them
'cause it'll make this job go much quicker. But as you could see,
you could still get this job done
with just a ratchet no problem. So with all the nuts removed,
you could put them in your used nut
and bolt jar because this kit comes
with brand new bolts that fit
into the new batteries. So now let's pull
the orange busbars off the battery. So the busbar's
completely removed from this side of the battery. We could just let
that sit like that for now. We're going to remove
that completely in a second. But first, let's remove
the other busbar real quick. So pry off
all the busbar covers and expose the nuts. And again,
remove all 28 8mm nuts. And just to give you an idea,
it does take about 7 minutes to do this by hand
and only about a minute to do it with power tools. Off camera, I timed it
'cause I was curious. So now we could remove
the busbars. And you could see this
right here, this is the wiring
for the safety plug so just pop it out. And we're going to reuse this
on the new batteries. So with the busbars removed
from both sides of the battery, now we could take
our safety plug wiring, the one that went
right over here, we could just tuck this off
to the side because we're going
to keep that connected. And then, we want
to take our old busbar wiring, this one, and we're going
to disconnect it from the these two spots
right here. So just use a small
flathead screwdriver to push the tab in
and pull the wire straight out. Same for the other one. Now we could open up
the white wire holder and remove both
of the orange wires. And then finally,
we need to disconnect the orange connector
at the bottom here. So depress the tab
and pull it out. Perfect. And just like that,
we removed our high voltage busbars. So make sure you save this
'cause there's a wire on here we're going to have
to reinstall with the new battery. Now, the next thing
we need to do is remove
the temperature sensor from the battery. So it connects into here
and it goes up here, there is one right there,
there is another one right there, and the final one
is right there. And to remove the sensor,
just pinch each side inwards and it comes right out. Now, let's pop off
the white wire holder and save this
'cause we're going to use these later. And get the middle
temperature sensor out along with the other
wire holder. And finally,
the last temperature sensor could be removed,
again, with its wire holder. Now right here
the harness is held in, so pop this out. And then,
this top wiring harness is in the way
of the bottom one which we need to remove. So let's remove the top one
to get easier access. And now we could get
the temperature sensor harness disconnected like so. And then, there's one more
temperature sensor down here in the case, so pop it out with a pliers. Good. And now the whole
temperature sensor harness could be removed. And with that,
we have removed everything from our battery. So now we could remove
this battery pack from our case. And to do that,
we need to flip this case over. And remember,
this is a 90lbs battery, so carefully flip this. Also, the edge
is pretty sharp right here so be careful. And just flip this over
completely like this. Good. So with our case flipped over,
now we need to remove this bracket right here
which is covering the bolts that hold
the battery in. So remove all eight fasteners
holding this bracket in. And then, we could remove
the bracket. Beautiful. So now you could see
we have access to all 14 bolts on this side,
as well as the 14 bolts on the other side
which holds our battery pack to the case. So let's remove those. So first, grab a ratchet
and a socket and you want to crack
each bolt loose because they're pretty tight
on here. And I'll say it again,
if you have power tools, use them so it's quicker. But I do have a trick
to speed things along. Once you crack
all these loose, grab your
Phillips head screwdriver and this will quickly
loosen them the rest of the way. So unscrew all the bolts
on this side. And don't lose them
'cause we're going to need these to install
into the new batteries. So with all the bolts
on this side removed, now let's go to the other side
of the battery and remove these bolts. So quickly unscrew
these bolts as well, and now we could pull
the battery case off the battery. So with our battery removed,
now what we're going to do is slide all these old cells
out of this framework here and slide in our new cells. So let's get started. A trick here is to use
a piece of wood to elevate this battery pack. And now we want
to crack these 12mm bolts loose back here. And these are usually
a little tight. There we go. So crack all four
of these bolts loose, and then remove
the bolts so we could take the end cap off. Good. So real quick,
let me show you the difference between
the new cylindrical cells and the old prismatic cells. So this prismatic cell technology
is from the early 2000s and the cylindrical cell
technology is current. This is what we're using now. The good thing
about the cylindrical cells is you could see the air gap
in here. Because it's a cylinder,
there is a large air gap and that allows it
to cool better compared to this right here
where the air gap is smaller. Now, heat is
the number one killer of battery,
so if you could keep a battery cooler,
it's going to last longer which is a big benefit. The other benefit is
these cylindrical cells charge quicker
with regenerative breaking compared to the OEM
which is a nice upgrade. So now remove
all the old cells and the easiest way
to do this is to slide them out of the bracket. Now we could take
all the old cells and put them in a box
to ship them back so we could get
our core charge back. Next, the kit comes
with four strands of protective wire loom
and this is included so that you could install this
over each of the metal bars like this. The reason why you want
to do this is to insulate
these metal bars, that way it doesn't cost
any shorts just in case there's chafing somewhere. Now at the end
of the wire loom, it's a little sloppy
so grab some electrical tape and tape up the ends. You could also use heat shrink,
but tape works fine. So just get a couple
of wraps around the end of the loom
and now the end looks good and it won't come apart. All right. So we have
our wire loom protector on all four of these posts.
They're all nicely taped up and we are good to go here. So let's go and install
our brand new battery pack. Now this battery pack
is labeled from 1 all the way to 14. We're going to make sure
that we keep it in that order because these batteries
are matched and balanced with each other to give you
the best possible battery life. So with that said,
let's get these installed. So now we want
to make sure we orient our bracket properly. You could see how
we have two metal rods here, these are the wide ones,
they're spread apart. We want the wider ones
on the bottom 'cause it's a nice big base. And don't forget to slide
your wood under here, that way it's easier
to slide the batteries in and easier to get
that end piece on. All right.
So we're going to start with battery 1, 2, and 3. And make sure
you don't bang these around or drop them
because you can damage the batteries. But get them in here
and slide them to the end. Next, we have
batteries 4, 5, 6, and 7. Then we have
batteries 8, 9, 10, and 11. And finally,
we have 12, 13, and 14. Okay. So our cells
are installed. We just want to make sure
they go from 1 all the way up to 14 in order. We also want to make sure
it's centered. So you could see,
here's the two metal rods. We have the center line here. It's even through
the whole battery pack, and it is. And then finally,
you just want to make sure the end here is flushed. So all the cells are flushed
against each other, and they are. So we're good to go. So the rib side goes up
against the battery and hand tighten
all four of these bolts to sandwich
the batteries together. And we want to torque
each one of these down to 23 ft-lbs. So with the battery cells
locked together, let's flip this over
so the bolt holes on the battery's face up. Then we could get
the battery case and get that on top. And you could see right here
is the black air dam, that goes on the open end
of the case. And the side without
the black air dam goes on the computer side
of the case. That way, you know
it's oriented correctly. Okay. So with our case
on our battery, we just want to make sure
that these bolt holes in the battery line up
with the holes in the case, and you could see they do. If they don't line up perfectly,
don't worry, you could shift
the case around to get them to line up. You just want to be able
to thread in a bolt, and then the rest of this
will line up as you thread in each bolt. So this side looks good. And if we take a look
at the other side, that looks good as well. So we're ready to install this
and thread in all those bolts. Now real quick,
organization is key. It takes a few extra minutes. If you want to do this job
without any problems at all, just take some baggies
and right down where everything goes
and keep it in order so you can't forget, that way when you go
to reinstall everything, you're not trying to figure out
which nut or bolt goes where,
it's all right here. So we have our case
to battery bolts, all 28 of them. So let's get them installed. Now I'm going
to quickly speed through tightening down each
of these bolts 'cause we don't need
to waste time here, but just make sure
you hand tighten them all like so. So with these bolts
hand tightened, don't torque them down yet. Let's come to the other side
and let's get these bolts in. And this side we want
to hand tighten as well. And now we want to get
our torque wrench and set it to 54 in-lb.
Not ft-lbs, in-lbs. So torque all these down,
making sure you don't miss any, and also make sure, again,
it's 54 in-lbs, not ft-lbs, 'cause if you use ft-lbs,
it will strip these threads right out and that'll damage
the battery. With all the bolts
torqued down, now we could get
the bracket on here and I have this baggie
so I could stay organized and not forget where any
of the fasteners go. And just get these
hand tightened in there for now, and then
we could torque them down to 66 in-lb. Good. And now we could flip
this back over so we could finish up
the install, and I cannot wait
to get this back in the car. So next, what we want
to do is connect our battery in series. So each of these cells
is about 15.7V, but when we connect them
all together, it's around 220V. And we'll do that
using the included brand new busbars,
and they go right up against the battery,
both on this side and on the other side. So just get the busbar
in place and screw in the new bolts
that came with the kit. Now when installing
the busbars, you don't want to tighten down
the bolts all the way just yet because we're going
to need to install a wire onto each of these
in a second. And right here
we don't need a busbar 'cause this is
where the safety switch wires are going to attach
and complete the circuit. But we do need to get
this last busbar in right here. Good. And with
all those busbars installed, now we could come around
to the other side and install these. Now both of these ends
don't get busbars 'cause they get
the orange wires when we're done. So just connect the busbars
to all the other batteries like so. So with all the busbars loose
but installed, the reason why we kept
them loose is because we need to install
our voltage acquisition wires, which are these right here.
They connect to each of these busbars,
that way the computer will know if the battery's depleted,
if it's fully charged, if any of these cells
are bad, and stuff like that. So this wiring harness plugs
right into the computer down at that orange plug. So let's unbundle it
and get the harness in the wire holder
on the bottom, and then just press it
into the computer until it clicks. Good. Now, there are
two main wires here, a shorter one
and a longer one. The shorter one stays
on this side which is closer, and the longer one wraps
around the other side of the battery. So for
the voltage acquisition wire that were running
along the far side of the battery,
we don't want to just run it like this because right here
is a bad chafing point that overtime could cause issues
against this metal bracket. So make sure you run
this wire through the white
wire loom protector, then we could tuck it right
behind the computer right here and run it around the corner
to the other side of the battery. Now since we're working
in this battery junction box area, grab the small orange wire
that we removed before and let's plug this in. There's two spots
to plug in orange wires. The shorter wire goes here.
They can't fit in to the wrong one,
so you can't mess this up. And then, let's put this
in this white wire holder. And this wire goes right
to this first cell right here. Now the other orange wire
is still connected to our orange busbars. We never disconnected it. So you could see it
right down here, just pry it off,
and then this comes off like that. And then we could separate it,
keep our wire here, and get this and send it back
with the core. So let's connect this wire
right here. And then we could run it
right through this wire holder and close that up. Good. So with both
of our orange wires connected, you could see the short one
runs right to our first battery right there,
and our long one runs all the way back
to the last battery right there. So let's get this
all wired up. So get your last
acquisition wire on the bolt,
and then bolt up the orange wire
to the last battery like so. And we'll torque this down
in a second. Same for the next wire.
Get it on the bolt and snug it up. And notice
how I'm holding the wire in a downward direction
so it doesn't turn as I tighten. Keeping this pointed down
will help keep everything nice and neat and organized. So tighten down
one acquisition wire for each busbar, and I'm putting them
on the right side of the busbar,
but you could put them on either side,
just make sure you keep it consistent. And also, make sure
it's only one wire per busbar. And finally, we have
our last blue one right here that goes
on the last orange wire. Good. And now we could torque
each of these down to 54 in-lb. Then, let's get
the new busbar covers that come with the kit
and install them. But first, let's tuck
the acquisition wire harness into the little channel
under the busbars so it's neat and organized. And the orange wire
has its own channel right here, as well, that we could
push it into. Then, we could get
the busbar covers on, starting with the skinny one
for the end here, and then the wider ones
go on the rest of these. And they just snap
into the battery like this. So get
all the busbar covers on. And check it out.
This came out awesome. Everything's wired up. It's covered
with the busbar covers and our wires are neat
and organized. So we're done on this side. Let's flip over to the other side
and finish wiring this battery up. So do the same thing
on this side. Each wire end goes on one
of the busbars, and in this case,
I'm using the left side. Just remember
to keep it consistent. And now
for the safety switch wiring, just grab this plastic cover
and pop it off. And now the two wires line up
to the batteries like this. So tighten down the orange wire
to the right side, and then get
that acquisition wire on the left side,
and then tighten that one down as well. And that's all there is
to wiring our safety switch. So now we're good
to go here. And now we could torque down
all the busbar bolts to 54 in-lb. And then, we could get
the busbar covers on each of these
and just make sure they all snap in place. And just like that,
we are done wiring in our brand new battery pack. Now all that's left is
to install our temperature sensors
which go on the top, and then after that,
we put the case on and get this battery back
in the car and test it out. So our temperature sensors
go on battery no. 2, no. 8, and no. 13. And this is what
a sensor looks like, there's a little spring here
so bend that inwards, that way when you push it
on the battery, it snaps in place like that. Now get the other
two sensors on. Good. And then
you want to grab the white wire holders
from your old temperature sensor harness, and this clip right on
to the metal rail and this will hold
the sensor wires in place, that way it stays organized. So let's get the other
two clips in place and run the wires
through it so the wiring is neat and organized
like that. Good. So now there's
one last temperature sensor that needs to go
all the way down in that hole there. So get it down there
and push it in until it snaps in place. Now let's connect the white
temperature sensor connector to the bottom spot
on the computer, and then push
the wiring harness into the holder up here. Then finally,
let's connect the other connector we removed to make it easier
to get to the bottom one. Good. Now our case
could go back on. And then get
your battery case baggie, that way we don't forget
to tighten anything. And there are four nuts
on this side that get torqued to 66 in-lb. And I picked up a spare
of safety fastener from the junkyard
because mine was missing from the case. And that snaps right
in there. So this side is done. Let's real quickly come
around to the other side and tighten
the other side down. Again, these four nuts
get torqued to 66 in-lb. And with the cover bolted down,
we are ready to install our brand new battery
in our car. Real quick, I do want
to mention, check your fan to make sure
it isn't covered in dust. In this case, we have a filter.
You guys saw we cleaned that filter so we don't have
any dust in here, but it's worth checking
because if you don't have a filter
and this gets clogged up, you're going to ruin
your brand new battery 'cause it won't cool down. And just so you get an idea
of what a fan looks like that's clogged up,
I grabbed this fan from a Prius in the junkyard
that didn't have a filter, and check this out. You see how it's
all clogged in there? That is pretty bad. So you need to make sure
you clean that out. I mean, just look at this.
This is crazy. And this right here
is why your battery might overheat. Not good. It's also why a filter
is pretty important. So you need to make sure
you clean this out. Now, when you're cleaning
this out, it's very important, do not use compressed air
where this spins, because if you let
this fan spin, it will damage the motor. You also don't want
to use water. You could actually do
a core exchange with the company
that sells this battery and they'll send you out
a cleaned one if you want, or if you want,
just hold the fan in place and then hit it with air
to clean it out, or use a vacuum.
Something like that. Just don't let it spin
and don't get water in it. Okay. So let's carefully get
our brand new very heavy battery
into the Prius, making sure
we don't damage anything. And since
I'm doing this myself, just walk the battery back
and forth along the cardboard to get it in place,
that way we could bulk it up. And once in place,
remove the cardboard pieces, then we could line up
the battery bolt hole. Get some medium strength
thread locker on the bolt and hand tighten it
into place. And do the same thing
for the other bolts as well. So with those two bolts
hand tighten, we have two more bolts
in that corner and two more bolts
in this corner. And remember,
the shorter bolt goes into the back here
where the rear seat bracket is. And the longer bolt goes
into the other bolt hole and just hand tighten
these down. Now let's move over
to the other side and get these two bolts in. Again, shorter bolt goes
to the seat bracket and just hand tighten both
of these bolts down. Now we can tighten down
all six of these bolts to 14 ft-lbs. So with everything
torqued down, now we could go
to the battery junction box and we want to grab
the wires that go to the inverter
and we'll attach these wires, then we'll attach the wires
down here. We'll get the lid
on our junction box, and then we'll test this out. So remove the two nuts
we threaded on here so we wouldn't lose them. Then we could get
the inverter wires on the posts and get those nuts
hand tighten down there, and torque them down
to 80 in-lb. Good. Now let's come down here
and plug in these three connectors. So just push them in
until you hear a nice click. Next, let's get
the electronics cover back on and grab your baggie
with all the fasteners for this. Now we can hand tighten
all five of these nuts, securing the cover
to the battery and torque them all down
to 66 in-lb. And finally, let's get
the safety fastener in. And now we're done. Okay. So before
we go any further and start installing
interior pieces and vents and stuff like that,
our battery is good to go. We have the cover on here,
we have our safety fasteners in, we're safe to try this out. So let's get
our safety plug in and it just pushes in,
then you close the lever, and push it all the way
to the side until it snaps in place. And one thing I want you
to keep in mind, make sure that you actually
push that in all the way so the unlock disappears. Otherwise, this won't work. So that needs
to be closed like that. So with that safety plugged in,
I also connected the negative terminal
on the battery. Let's go try this out. All right. Moment of truth. Did we fix this car? So I have my foot
on the break. I'm going to hit
that start button, and when I do that,
you're going to hear two distinctive clicks,
those are the relays turning the battery on
and we should see no error messages up
on the dashboard. So let's give it a try. Beautiful. The engine just started.
There are no check engine lights or anything on the dash
which is good. And since the engine's running,
you could see it's charging up the battery
which is great. So the engine just shut off
on its own, meaning, the battery
is charged up enough for right now. So I'm going to shut
the engine. And we know everything
is working, right? We didn't have
any warning lights on the dash. So let's go install
the rest of the interior. Now back at the battery,
technically we don't have to remove this
if we don't want, but I always like to be safe,
so any time I'm working around the battery. It's worth it.
It takes two seconds to do. Pull it out
and you're good to go. Now let's go get some
of the vents installed and then get
our side panel installed, and we'll be done. So first,
get the wire harness clips pushed back into the battery
like so. Then, let's add
that fan filter and vent and push that clip
into the fan so it holds it in place. Then, we could add
our white cover and push it into this clip
right here. And then push it right here
to snap it into the battery. Next, let's add this vent
to the top of the battery. And finally, with all the vents
and everything installed, now let's get
our side panel installed. And if you remember,
we did epoxy that plastic clip on the back here,
so let's take our clamps off and our clip is good to go. That's glued on there.
So we can install this. So just push in
at the top of the panel so it clicks in,
and work your way around the panel,
getting it in place like so. And finally, we have
our last baggie of fasteners for the interior. Now we have four fasteners
holding this in, we have the silver tie down,
we have the plastic piece, we have that black tie down,
and then we have another silver tie down there. So let's get this first
silver tie down in and snug it up. And then, let's get
this black tie down in. Then under the seatbelt,
push that plastic clip in. And finally, let's get
that last silver tie down snugged up. Beautiful. So with our side panel
installed, now let's come around
to the passenger side here and let's get
our air vent cover installed. So get the vent in place
like this and push downwards
so it clicks in. So now we need to install
this black 12mm bolt, but the problem is going to be—
if we just put it in our socket like this,
the angle we have to install it at,
it could fall out, and remember,
this bolt is very deep behind the seat.
If it falls out down here, it's going to be a pain
to get back. So a little trick is to get
some black tape and just put it
over the end of the socket like that. Just want to tape
the end so it's pretty much closed off. And then, you take your bolt
and you push the bolt in as far as you could get it. Just like that.
Now the bolt is in there good
because the clearance is so tight. Then, we could carefully get
the bolt in the hole and tighten it down
all the way. Perfect. So with our vent cover
installed, now let's get this floor tray
back on the battery. So get the floor tray lined up
and push it down to make sure it's in place. And you just want
to hit around the tray, that way all the clips
snap in. So with this secure,
don't forget there is a hidden bolt
that we need to tighten down
right about here. So get the bolt
tightened down. Then, let's get bolt seats
back up and get the privacy cover
back in. And we can't forget
about the safety plug, so let's get this in. So that just pushes in,
and make sure that you can't see
that unlock text. Now snug up
the negative battery cable and make sure it's tight. Then, let's get
this access cover back on and it just snaps into place. Then, we have
this plastic trim piece that gets pushed in, followed by this bucket
in the corner here and its lid. Then, the battery cover
in the other corner. And then,
the big trunk storage tray, followed by our floor lid. And finally, the trunk liner. And just like that,
we are done. Let's go for a quick test drive
and see what kind of fuel economy we get. Okay. So for the test drive,
I'm taking a trip down to the beach
and I've been trying to maximize fuel economy,
so I'm coasting to all the red lights
and stop signs. I'm using my break regen
as much as possible. I'm going full electric mode
as much as I can as well, and that's actually
what I'm doing right now. This trip to the beach
is a little over 20 miles with lots of elevation change,
we have highway driving, we have city driving,
so it's a good mixture to put this battery
to the test. And this car
is performing amazing. The ride is smooth,
there's plenty of power. That slipping
in the transmission that we felt,
well, that's completely gone. Also, you remember
when the engine shut off, it used to vibrate? Well, it doesn't do
that anymore. It's nice and smooth. So the new battery fixed
all those problems. And check this out.
You're not going to believe this. We got just under 70 MPG
for our trip to the beach which is incredible. Now this is definitely
not normal results, but typically expect to get
between 40-50 MPG for a Prius. Also, I just scanned
the computer and we have
no more trouble codes, so we have officially fixed
this hybrid. All right. And that's everything
you need to know on how to replace
a hybrid battery on a Generation 3 Prius. We got this car for $2700,
we spent $2200 with the hybrid battery
which is brand new, and we put about $100
in hubcaps and cleaning supplies,
and stuff like that, into the car. So for $5000,
we have a car that's worth at least $3000 or $4000 more. We could easily get $8000
for this if we find the right buyer,
or maybe even $9000 and they'll have an amazing car
that gets great fuel economy, it runs and drives great,
and it looks spectacular. Just look at this car. So hopefully this video
is helpful and you guys enjoyed it. If it was, remember to give it
a thumbs up. If you're not a subscriber,
consider hitting that subscribe button. And as always,
all the tools and products I used in this video,
including the battery pack, are linked down
in the description so you could easily find them.
