IMA battery replacement - alternative to dealer in Seattle area?

[bunner bob]

My IMA light came on last week. I took it to the dealer and they said I need a new IMA battery, and that it's going to be $2783 + tax (I don't need the BCM or MCM since they were replaced previously under recall).

Does anyone know of a non-dealer alternative in Seattle, or some other, cheaper way of replacing the battery? I see ads on this site from hybrid-battery-repair.com - any experience with them? Of course they're at the other end of the country, so I still need someone to do the remove/replace/shipping.

Any advice greatly appreciated!

- Bob

[CycleDoc]

Originally Posted by bunner bob

My IMA light came on last week. I took it to the dealer and they said I need a new IMA battery, and that it's going to be $2783 + tax (I don't need the BCM or MCM since they were replaced previously under recall).

Does anyone know of a non-dealer alternative in Seattle, or some other, cheaper way of replacing the battery? I see ads on this site from hybrid-battery-repair.com - any experience with them? Of course they're at the other end of the country, so I still need someone to do the remove/replace/shipping.

Any advice greatly appreciated!

- Bob

When was the current battery installed, and how many miles? It could very well have unbalanced cells, which can show as a "bad" battery, but with a grid charger and a bit of luck......new battery not needed. Such was the case with mine..

Worth a try, and you should have a grid charger for a new battery anyway...

[gilbertguy]

Hey bob,

As far as I know there are two guys that specialize in rebuilding these batteries.

Hybrid Battery Repair (been around a long time, active on this site, good reputation, out of NY)
Hybrid-Battery-Repair

Hybrid Revolt (had my battery rebuilt by them with a good experiance, here in Phoenix so I just dropped off battery so no shipping cost)
HybridReVolt: Hybrid Battery Repair

There may be more out there but these are the only two that I know of short of you doing it yourself. I thought about trying but getting matching sticks to replace the bad sticks are the problem there. All the sticks need to be balanced.

My car was down for 2 weeks while the battery got rebuilt and it sucked, good luck getting yours running again soon.

[bunner bob]

My car is a 2000, and the current battery was put in before I got it in 2003 or so. What's a grid charger?

[rajuncajun]

Technically, a grid charger is any charger you use to charge the IMA battery from the "grid", AKA your normal 120V household power.

See the sticky thread in this topic at the top of the list for more info than you ever wanted to know on grid chargers. The idea of the grid charger is to slowly charge the pack at a safe current such that all the cells in the pack can be "topped off" with a full charge, which can't happen when the pack is in the car very well because the BCM only uses about the middle 60% of the battery's capacity in the interest of not over- or under-charging it.

[Hybrid-Battery-Repair]

Originally Posted by gilbertguy

My car was down for 2 weeks while the battery got rebuilt and it sucked, good luck getting yours running again soon.

Well we can't match two weeks (one of the tests takes 2 weeks by itself), but we set the customer up to drive their car in the interim on gas only.

We have a local shop in Seattle that does installations for us as well. Pull in, go for a coffee, come back and drive away.