Bought an 08 Tahoe last week. After a couple driving issues I did the hybrid battery test you guys have here, and shocker, I need to replace it.

I’m wondering what the best option is out there currently. Rebuild or just replace. It seems like vehicles that use NiMH are getting fewer and older, so I’m not sure what the that the best cells are currently, or what vehicle to look for for cells. Or who sells a rebuild kit using new batteries.

If replace or refurb is the best, where is the best place to look for that?

 

that's seems to be the million dollar question these days..

from what I can tell. places like green bean are the easiest. they come out and swap the whole pack out. from what I understand they will do it at your house. not current on the price. I think they mostly use cells from wrecked prius, runs them thru some reverb cycles on special charger to bring back some capacity. I've not found much of anything negative about them. only thing I saw is for warranty, they want to see a battery failure code. the prius does this well, our trucks seem to have that setting so badly your truck can be bucking and running bad for a year or more while you think your tranny failing, when it's the battery software not reporting bad cells as early as it should, mainly to get passed that 8yeah 100k warranty. but one comment I saw said it made getting a warranty referb difficult too. so maybe paying extra for the longer warranty isn't a good return on $

new seems to have been taken down from gm parts direct. but I read if you do to the dealership, while they might fight you about it. if they just place the order a new one shows up in a few weeks, as the plant is mostly owned by Toyota and still up and running. price? no clue, a while ago 4k with 1k core was commonly posted, but not sure you can find thst price these days.


there's a another guy that sells lithium replacement cells for it. if you Google it comes up and you can read on just about any forum what people think of the idea. everyone thinks it's not going to work without programming the battery control module for the different type of battery chemistry. they are 3300$ 2 year warranty plus shipping I believe.

there's some nimh round cells I've seen, but Keith.s here has a low opinion of anything other than the oem nimh, he's probably correct as I don't know much about anything lol.

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personally I went with the lithium because eh, why not. I was interested to see how they held up and didn't mind if it became a waste of money after 2 years, I like the thing and keep cars kinda forever. but all I can say is so far they seem do be doing well, but only about 9k miles on them at this point and I don't live where it gets cold enough to damage them either, which is a common concern. so I don't recommend them just because I went that way because of the unknown.

either way, once you get a battery replaced everyone always says it feels like a new truck. mine literally went from annoying to drive like I was going to damage it, to flawless. can't even tell when the engine starts most of the time and I just towed a car on a trailer 2k miles at just over 13mpg. I could drive around parking lots up to 10mph on battery with at least 6k on the back haha. was kinda cool.

 

I definitely went through your post and like that you went ahead and did it. My biggest worry is that we live on the road, and it will have a little 10’ trailer hooked up so I’m worried the cooling won’t keep up with the high temps from the li-ion batteries discharging so quickly. Whenever we decide to settle down, it will be a mild or warmer climate, I grew up in the snow and I’m done with that ish… so no freezing issues.

I might just go with one of those refurb packs for now, and after a few thousand miles and some years down the road when NiMH cells are unobtainable, I’ll look harder into Lihium cells like you did. Thanks for the response

 

makes sense. I only had a sports car on the back, not a big wind brake that a trailer would be. it doesn't seem to use its battery very much at interstate speed when towing, so I didn't see any increase cell Temps till I got into stop and go traffic. even then they stayed under 90deg. my nmhi pack was bad, and I think they run hotter when struggling but it was always over 100deg. coolent was always solid at 220. tranny never got over 167deg. my scanner shows oil temp, but I don't believe there's an oil temp sensor, so it's probably calculated. it was 230deg max. so I was happy. I think it will pull your trailer nicely.

I did send off a tranny fluid sample since I always send off an oil sample from the car after track days. be interesting to see the results. I kinda consider these trucks rolling transmissions, everything else I'm confident I can fix. if the tranny goes, ugh finding someone to rebuild it sounds difficult mechanics won't hardly touch these things. I might just buy a manual and try myself first haha. which reminds me, if you haven't done it. the first thing I did when I got the truck was order the 2 filters and use oem fluid to change it out. I don't think anyone ever does tranny fluid and I feel like these trucks ask a lot of the fluid. well that was 2nd thing. 1st was to turn off the afm stuff that has pretty much a 100% failure rate on these Gen 4 ls engines. it's a shame, since they say it helps fuel mileage which is the point of it being a hybrid but replacing an engine if it goes out over 1mpg just hurts.

as for camping, there's a company that makes big inverters that tie directly into the hybrid battery of the prius. I contacted him about doing one for a volt, since I feel like that's a better application for it. much bigger battery and much smaller engine running to charge it back up, but he seemed to be way more interested in making one for the trucks since it's basically a higher voltage prius battery but I never followed up. I think it could be super useful for a small camper thou.

https://www.plugoutpower.com/

 

I went with greenbean battery for mine when I went out mine came with a lifetime warranty I haven’t use it yet I’ve had mine for about 5 years already with no issue I would into them if need a replacement one

 

I’ll have to go back through your thread, but where did you get the cells from? (Edit: never mind, it’s literally the name of your post)

First thing I did was give it a synthetic oil change, trans fluid and filter change, bleed brakes, fuel treatment, and got power steering fluid before I realized that was all electric. Control arms on the way, needs tires too, all pretty expected for something with 200k miles. Engine is really smooth when it’s not doing the weird hybrid stuff, trans shifts great. Should be great once these little issues are ironed out. I’ve been a tech for a few years now, rebuilt a few LS platform engines, and I enjoy electrical. This is up m my alley, I for sure just need a little direction when it comes to this niche stuff.

Once we’re at the next place for a bit, I’ll do the entire DoD/AFM delete to get rid of that cam, I will be doing like you said, and just disable it for now though. It sucks they put that whole system in for so long, everything else is so reliable.

 

5 years on a refurb sounds pretty good to me, I’d definitely rather replace the cells, but this seems like the easier option from lack of available parts. Which I’m sure is by design. Gotta keep those prices high huh!

 

[QUOTE=Jeeplife78;276780I might just go with one of those refurb packs for now, and after a few thousand miles and some years down the road when NiMH cells are unobtainable, I’ll look harder into Lihium cells like you did. Thanks for the response[/QUOTE]

There are new models on the showroom floor right now using the same NiMH. Will be available for as long as Toyota makes a profit making their own batteries.

 

That is surprising to me just because everything today is all about lithium, but it definitely makes sense. Why change if they’re making that money, and NiMH being a little less temperamental and easier to charge probably helps too. Are the current lithium charging systems more complex with hybrid stuff and everything? I was curious about balancing if I put those Nexcell cells in

 

Proper Lithium battery management requires monitoring of individual cells/parallel cell groups. They've always been complex, and they always will be.

There is limited balancing within each 5S modules, but there is none, and there can be no balancing between cells in different modules. They are not monitored in any way individually, and they are treated as NiMH by the vehicle.

I've expressed an opinion here:

https://electricvehicleforums.com/fo...22/#post275883