[dfiore]

147,400 miles on my 2000 as I was coming out of Key West, FL and heading back to Tampa, the battery had been recalibrating itself way too often and the IMA idiot light came on. Luckily, I am able to get a battery pack for only $405 with 13k miles. A good deal considering a new one is about $3400 installed. Be aware, people, shipping is expensive! WI to FL is costing me $150 The dealership is charging me $230 to put it in this weekend. It'll be like new again! Yippee. Guess I won't have to trade up when the new one comes out.

 

[Muftak]

Sorry to hear your battery gave up. When you say they were recalibrating too often can you be a bit more specific?

Mine recalibrates almost everytime I take it out, about every three hundred miles. I had the dealer check it and they gave me the standard "everything is normal". I'm of course keeping a log of all the recals.

 

[dan]

Hi dfiore-

Sorry to hear it. Still at 135K you are pretty far out there. Hmm…405+150+230 is well under $1000, sounds pretty good. Who found the battery, you or your dealer?
I wonder if there will be a trend of battery deaths from hot to cold areas with pockets of early deaths among those with regular drives in high mountains? Maybe people could use this thread and we could keep an unofficial poll.

 

[Rick]

What year car did the replacment battery pack come out of? I know they replace the battery control and motor control modules along with the battery pack. I've pretty much convinced myself that there are some changes to the BCM in 02+ that helped reduce the problem with recalibrations.

Just curious.

 

[dfiore]

replacement battery

I got mine from car-parts.com from an '01 in WI. They say they'll have it to me by Friday morning. It recals about once or twice an hour and the idiot light is on, but it is still working, and I still got 58 mpg after the light came on, on the Interstate (75mph). Good thing too since I still need to do about 1000 more miles before I fix it.

Dan

 

[b1shmu63]

Any ideas for the old pack? :wink:

 

[Armin]

save the old pack!

Dan,

I was going to start by saying sorry about the dead battery. But I realized, You're actually quite lucky: almost 150k miles out of the first pack, and an almost new one installed for under $800! What a deal!

Did you have recalibrations on the old battery? If so, how frequent?

Don't let the dealership take away your old battery! If you don't have any other plans for it, I'll take it

 

[RWBUENTE]

When you went to Car-parts.com how did you select the search for the battery pack. I was checking it out and the best I could see was Electrical components.