Daox's 2004 Toyota Prius Build Thread

[Daox]

Originally Posted by bennelson

Dude...
Dooooood.
DUDE!

When are we going to put it in? Or are you getting Eric to install it? You know that Tom, Rich, and the boys will want to tinker with it as well.

Wait a minute...Won't the Prius now have two plugs? One for block heater, and one for the Plug-In kit!

I'd like to wait until an EV build day, but depending on when I get it, I don't know if I'll be able to wait that long! I'm definitely going to do it myself (or with help from the EV guys). The install is really quite easy.

The Prius actually doesn't have a block heater installed atm. The coolant thermos does almost as good of a job, and no external energy is used. What I really want to do, is put the block heater in the thermos for maximum heat for energy used.

[Daox]

Originally Posted by NiHaoMike

The right way to do it is to parallel them.

The OEM pack is ~230V, and the aux pack is 48V. They use a 3000W dc to dc converter to slowly charge the OEM pack from the aux pack. There is also the issue of capacity. The OEM pack is just under 1kWh (which you can't nearly use 100% of) and the aux pack is 4kWh. I agree it would be better to parallel them, but thats just not how this kit is setup.

[Daox]

Originally Posted by mrbigh

At least you can paint the the shiny washers to blend the "bling" with their background, looks sort of cheesy for a Prius

Perhaps when the temperature is a little more above 0°F I'll get around to that.

[NiHaoMike]

Originally Posted by Daox

The OEM pack is ~230V, and the aux pack is 48V. They use a 3000W dc to dc converter to slowly charge the OEM pack from the aux pack. There is also the issue of capacity. The OEM pack is just under 1kWh (which you can't nearly use 100% of) and the aux pack is 4kWh. I agree it would be better to parallel them, but thats just not how this kit is setup.

I was talking about the charger and the engine heater. Although if I were to modify a Prius, I would replace the stock battery with a custom one and build my own control and power circuits. I'll name it after my best friend Allie Moore since that creates a good acronym - Allie Moore Prius (AMP) or Allie Moore Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (AMP-HEV). (As in, "Watch out Volt, here comes the AMP.")

[Daox]

Oh, haha. If I had the block heater, I'd have to have some sort of onboard timer. I wouldn't want the heater running the entire time I'm charging.

[NiHaoMike]

I would use a SSR to control the engine heater using a GPIO on the instrumentation/control/entertainment computer. Then I can have it connect to my home 802.11 network so I can turn on the engine heater or set a schedule using SSH. If it frequently gets cold in the area, I'll also add another SSR and an auxiliary cabin heater. If it frequently gets hot in the area, I'll figure out how to hack the controls so the A/C can be run by remote. (I guess that's part of my vision for my "dream car"...)

[mrbigh]

I had no time to go through all the pages of DAOX Prius mods, but for what I read, mostly is related to the "new" discoveries made in his great vehicle.
I had been modifying and upgrading mine since early 2005 and let me tell you that I did a lot, but this is not the purpose of this commentaries.
Daox, now that you will install the EV range extender offered by Automation Direct, the Enginer KIT, and in order to maximize your FE and mostly because you reside in Wisconsin, with a severe cold climate, you must install an Electric Block Heater, blocked lower and upper front grills and a Thermostat hack, including a means of reading CAN values for engine temperature (Scangauge or CANView).
Now, abstract yourself and analyze what I just typed..............well, I will tell you.
Everything is temperature related, and if the ICE find itself in a comfort temperature zone, you will be able to maximize the turn on/off cycles of the engine; I'm not telling or suggesting you to defeat any warm up cycle that the ICE requires to keep a toasty Catalytic Converter and kill emissions with an ice cold engine, but after the fact of a successful ICE start you can control how and when to maximize your Forced Electric Mode, that's the proper way to enhance your "PHEV" conversion.
In my case, I been doing it successfully since almost 3 years. Now, I have an approximate extra 6KW of NiMH in my conversion.

[orange4boy]

I now have PHEV-NV

[Daox]

PHEV-NV?

mrbigh, I've seen the coolant hack (have the scangauge) and I was concerned about emissions. I should read up on it a bit more though as I don't fully understand how it works.

What PHEV conversion do you have?

[orange4boy]

NV=envy

I wish a PHEV conversion was as simple in the 2003 Prius. I'm looking forward to yours.

I think the coolant hack must have some emissions downsides as you are telling the ECU that the coolant is warmer than it is. I'd rather just preheat as much as possible. I will probably have two coolant heaters set up eventually.

Bob has done this hack and probably knows the emissions angle.