Hello all,

I have a 2006 FEH with 130,000 miles on it. The car is in great shape and has tons of life left in it. For the past few months the HV battery has started going dead overnight. Typically there's enough pixies in the battery after a day such that the ICE will start, but it will be slow as hell until the HV battery is charged some. More than 1 day of sitting and I'll typically have to use the battery jump button.

My dilemma is this: I have a Maverick Hybrid on order, and have no idea if that will be built this coming year, and was hoping the HV battery in our escape would last long enough for that car to come. Now it's not looking like the case. I've called a few hybrid shops in the DC area, and one place (reputable) will install a refurbished battery for $2500 and offer a 1 year warranty. Another small shop, which remanufactures the batteries themselves (i.e., cobbles batteries together with 'good' used cells) would be a little over $1K with a two year warranty; this shop also sells their batteries on ebay (see here). The $2500 shop is very reputable, but that's a hard pill for me to swallow as the repair would be coming out of the Maverick fund. The $1K fix is much easier for me, but I'm putting my trust in a small shop to stay in business to offer the warranty.

What would you do? Another thing worth mentioning is the HCU in our FEH likes to act up in hot weather, so somehow getting that replaced with a used unit might also be on the table this summer.

 

Use the HV jump start thread to give your battery a full charge with cooling via a box fan laid on the cells. < $100 in materials, and it might fix your battery.

 

Thanks for the input. Just gave that thread a read and it's very good. Would you recommend trying to do a Forscan balance before installing charging wiring and doing the manual charge up? Or am I past the point where balancing may be useful?

 

Totally worth trying the balance routine. If you already have Forscan, what are your voltage and DEL_MOD_V values doing when you need to use your jump starter?

Also, crazy important to put a 10+ amp charger on your 12V when you do the jump. The voltage sag of the 12V causes the jump starter to pull back. Best if done on a fully charged 12V that has been on float overnight.

 

Ok, back with some information. The battery in the nav system was showing empty this morning (24 hours of sitting), so I ran Forscan and here are the battery stats:

Battery status after sitting 24 hours (nav showed it was empty)

Balancing wouldn't run unless the battery was at 15*C, so I had to drive it a bit to get the temp up. Here's the battery after driving it for 20-25 mins:


After a 20-25 minute drive to chick fil a

Then I got home and ran 3 cycles of the balancing procedure:


Voltage differential definitely went down. Each balance cycle took only ~10 mins or so. Also ran the fan check and they're fine.

Any thoughts? What really jumps out to me is the 30% difference in SOC (DELT_SOC), which to may layman brain seems to indicate there's a week cell or two in there. I'll see how the car behaves over the next week or two and report back.

 

< .19V is where it should be all the time. In a discharged battery that needs a jump (won't start the car), very common to see DEL_MOD_V higher when the battery voltage is too low. Generally not a concern in that case, BUT...

The total voltage of 320V+ and the DEL_MOD_V of .63 definitely points to ailing cell(s) AND/OR gross imbalance.

The balance procedure is only somewhat effective. IIRC, it only goes to 85% SoC.

Will be interesting to see what the progression of the DEL_MOD_V value is every 24 hours.

Still worth considering an external charge to true 100% with cooling.

 

So I’m starting to explore some options for a refurbished battery replacement for my 2006 FEH. I found a local(ish) shop that sells refurb batteries for $1500 with a two year warranty. This is a price I can stomach for this car; the greentec stuff is just a little much for me to justify. But I’m also a little nervous buying from a smaller local shop.

For my own context, how long should a first gen FEH with a healthy HV be able to sit without going flat? Right now if I park mine with the battery indicating full on the console it’ll show empty between 24 and 48 hrs later. It’ll have enough juice in it to start the engine but it’ll be slow as hell until it’s charged up a little.

 

Went out to drive it today. Here’s the battery read out before starting it up after sitting for 55 hours. The ICE did start though. Definitely time for a new battery.




I’ve got two options locally.

1) A reputable hybrid shop that will put in a refurb battery from somebody like Dorman or LKQ for $1500. Only a 6 month warranty though.
2) A hybrid battery refurb shop that will install a battery they refurbished using a process to “decrystallize the NiMH” cells for $1300 with a two year warranty. I’m not sure why decrystallizing cells means; seems like some voodoo magic.

I had a much better gut feel about option 1. The shop owner was very friendly and was very knowledgeable about the FEH, but I like the price and warranty of option 2 more.

Thoughts?

 

DEL_MOD_V of 1.13V indicates cell failure. Time to replace.

 

Agreed. Do you have any idea what cell refurbishment by decrystallizing means? It seemed kinda flim flam to me when it was mentioned by the local hybrid battery refurb shop.