Charging a 2009 Ford Escape Hybrid Battery: An Odyssey

This post is pretty long. What I did was take you through all the steps I took to get the hybrid battery recharged on my daughter’s 2009 Ford Escape. If you are only interested in the actual charging technique skip to page 6. If you want to take the trek with me keep reading.

This trek started because the power steering went out on the Escape. A little research revealed that Ford had a recall for the power steering on this vehicle. My daughter found the Escape was too hard to drive without power steering and decided to take it to a Ford dealer to get it fixed. She parked it until she had a chance to take it 50 miles to the nearest Ford dealer.

Yep, you guessed it the Escape wouldn’t start. It had been running fine (except for the power steering problem). Thus, it got towed to the Ford dealer. It took a couple of weeks before Ford got back to her. They said a defective hybrid battery most likely caused the power steering failure. Not to worry though, they could fix it for around 10,000 dollars.

What a laugher that was. The car was worth less than half that. It was at this point I got involved. I did a little snooping around on the Internet. It didn’t take long to find out that a lot of people had this problem. If they let their hybrid sit the battery drained and the car wouldn’t start.

One thread was particularly helpful. A fellow said that Ford had a charger they could use to charge the hybrid battery enough to get the car started (prior to the 2009 model you can do this on your own using the car’s regular battery see your owner’s manual or check out the procedure on the Internet). According to this fellow and several others, not all Ford dealers had the charger but they could borrow one from another dealer.

Thus armed, my daughter got back to the Ford dealer who had told her the battery was defective. They said they had no knowledge of such a charger. She called all sorts of Ford dealers in the area with the same result. Damn irritating to say the least.

I did not find the following video until after I had gotten the battery charged but if you are haggling with Ford over them being able to charge your Escape hybrid battery you might show them the video. It shows the charger in question being used. I wish I had found this video at this point but I did not. Anyway, the URL for that video appears below. The part showing the charger and its use starts about half way through.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/f1b0u5d7fmhhfx7/HybridStartStall.mp4?dl=0

Not know about the above video, I went searching for how to get the battery charged enough to start the engine. One thing I found was that the battery shuts down to prevent it from fully discharging and damaging the battery (it also has built in overcharging protection). One person claimed that only one in a million of these batteries fail. I don’t know how true that is but the batteries were well tested and seem to be pretty bulletproof.

The first break I had was finding the following video of a fellow (bartellj) charging the Escape Hybrid battery with a Prolong charger.

Prolong was developed to use on Toyota products but bartellj got it to work on the Escape. This charger would do the job the way he did it but it looked like a real hassle and would cost $400 or so for the charger. Nonetheless, I now knew it could be done. I kept searching.

I found another fellow who had developed a kit to get the job done on a Ford Escape Hybrid battery. I gave this one a lot of thought but in the end decided to keep looking. The link to this set up appears below.

Ford Escape Hybrid Battery Booster ( 2005 – 2009)

It wasn’t long before I ran across a fellow reporting that he had done the job with a much less expensive charger (the one I got cost $40 plus shipping and tax…less than $50 total). Naturally I was intrigued. I read and reread his post and a lot of replies to his post. In the end, I decided to give it a go. The URL for S. Keith’s procedure appears below:

https://www.greenhybrid.com/forums/f26/09-feh-sit-about-year-cant-jump-star-31104/index3.html

Following S. Keith’s steps will require you to remove the hybrid battery or at least get it so it can be lifted. Monty has an excellent video to show you how to do that. The URL for that appears below:

Once you have access to the battery you will need to disassemble the battery. Monty disassembles the whole thing. I watched the process just to see how the thing was put together. Don’t worry. You don’t have to take it all apart the way Monty does. But you will find it useful to watch the sections having to do with the part you will need to disassemble to gain access to the positive and negative terminals that allow you to charge the battery. The URL for Monty’s video on how to dissect a Ford Escape Hybrid battery appears below:

Now as to what I actually did to charge the hybrid battery. I followed Monty’s procedures for disconnecting the battery, and removing the top over the battery (you do not need to remove the cover over the fan section). I did not remove the battery from the vehicle. The reason people remove the battery is to gain access to four screws on the sides of the cover. You can’t get at them while the battery is in its normal position in the car (See Monty’s video).

You can do what I did though to avoid taking battery entirely out of the car. I used a crowbar to lift the back of the battery and blocked it up with wood blocks (as one person noted you need to be very careful with this…the case is plastic….I wrapped the end of the crowbar…actually a small pry bar. In hindsight it would be better to get a buddy to help you raise it). I got it high enough to get the side screws out and then lowered it back into its normal position.

Here’s a picture of my 2009 Escape Hybrid Battery once I got the top off and lowered it back in to position.

The red circle in the photo below (this photo and the two that follow it appeared in S. Keith’s post) shows the charger that Ford had in these Escape Hybrids before 2009. You can see the hole where it was in the photo above. What was Ford thinking?

Now we are getting down to the nitty gritty. What do you do to charge this thing? If you look to the right side of the battery, you will see the ECM (engine control module). It is the grey box directly across from the charger circled in red on the left. If you can’t spot it, don’t worry. Go to Monty’s video and go forward until he shows you where it is and how to remove it.

You will need to remove the ECM to get access to the relay that contains the positive and negative terminals you’ll need to connect to in order to charge the battery.

Monty shows you how to remove the relay as well. He shows that right after he shows you how to remove the ECM. You gotta love the internet!

Now we are getting somewhere. You have the relay loose. Don’t take it all the way out. Just flip it over. When you do, you’ll see the two screws circled in red that appear in S. Keith’s photo below:

You take that cover off and set it aside. Now you are looking at the guts of the relay. Which are the terminals of interest? Fortunately, S. Keith circled them for you. Positive is circled in red and negative in black. How sweet it is!

I just loosened those, attached my wires, tightened them, and put the cover back on the relay (there is a convenient opening that allows you to thread your wires up and out). You reinstall the relay, the ECM and your battery is ready to charge. (You can test the state of charge of the hybrid using your two wires before you get started. I did. My multimeter read 230 volts as I recall. Naturally you have to put the orange plug back in the battery to get this reading. I assume you pulled the orange plug the very first thing.

MAKE SURE YOU PULL THE ORANGE PLUG OUT BEFORE YOU START WORKING ON THIS BATTERY. TAKE IT ALL THE WAY OUT. TURNING IT TO THE UNLOCK POSTION IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH. IT IS STILL LIVE. TAKE IT ALL THE WAY OUT!!!!!!!

Ok. We are set with our wires. Now we need our charger. I bought the one pictured below from Mouser Electronics ( https://www.mouser.com/?gclid=CjwKCAjwzIH7BRAbEiwAoDxxTn4xJ9hZVsfOpNNTgtU_iS2BQ1H_wSzDP4tIBockZrWgea9cO3xkgxoCIY8QAvD_BwE )

This charger or one like it will come without plugs. You add one for the AC side (I cut the end off an old power cord for a computer for the AC male plug). Wiring diagrams for S. Keith’s approach (he wired two chargers together…top diagram) appear below. I followed another poster’s approach (Tribu Tibas)

. The wiring diagrams below are his. S. Keith looked them over and agreed they were accurate. Tibas used a more powerful charger so only needed one charger. Notice the diodes in each diagram. Get those when you get the charger and wire them as shown (the diodes are ridiculously inexpensive about 25 cents each but protect your circuits like you wouldn’t believe)

Here’s my wiring job. The diodes are under the red (positive) and blue (negative) duct tape.

I tested the charger after I had it wired. As you can see in the accompanying graphic, the charger put out 430 volts, more than enough to charge the hybrid battery.

Here’s a shot of my charging set up.

       The wood blocks were there to hold things in place and make sure the positive and negative wires didn’t have a chance to come into contact.

       You can see that I charged this battery while it was in the car. I did not remove the battery. As noted earlier, I lifted the rear of the battery enough to allow me to remove the screws on both sides of the battery. I used wood blocks to hold it in place while I removed those screws. Same deal in reverse to put it back together.

Notice the orange plug is in place. You need to reinstall it in order to charge.

I charged the battery for 6 hours. I started the vehicle before I put it back together. Yes, I reconnected the wires on the back of the battery but that’s all. Once it started (something of a miracle in my mind), I let it idle until the internal combustion engine stopped so that the battery would be fully charged before reassembling it.

Low and behold the car runs fine and the original problem is gone. The power steering is fine. It has been about a month now so I’m thinking the battery was not bad…just discharged to the point that it wouldn’t start the car. It must have been a bit low to cause the power steering to go out in the first place.

I did not run the wires I used to charge the battery out of the battery box as others do. I insulated them and zip tied them inside the box. If I ever need to charge the battery again [which I seriously doubt now that my daughter knows the bit about not letting it sit for long periods of time without starting it occasionally and letting it idle in park (not neutral…drains the battery in neutral…go figure) until the internal combustion engine stops], taking the cover off the battery won’t be a big deal. I worried about adversely affecting the airflow around the battery by breaching the integrity of the case by running wires through it. I also worried about those high voltage wires being outside the case…call me a chicken. S. Keith has advice about running the wires outside the case and putting a permanent plug in place for those less chicken.

I hope someone finds this odyssey of value. I certainly appreciate all the help I found on the net for this problem. S. Keith’s stuff in particular was invaluable. I wrote to him and thanked him for his assistance. True to his fashion he wrote back and suggested the following:

“I do recommend you obtain a PC copy of Forscan with a compatible cable. It has a battery rebalance feature where it pushes the battery to a higher state of charge to equalize it. I have no data to support it, but the practice is consistent with operations that restore capacity and balance.”

I will get around to the Forscan bit in due course.

I can’t end this without saying a few words about the Ford dealers in this area. Shame on all of you! If you really don’t know about this, get educated! If you do know about it, gee I can’t go there but you do know where it goes.

By the way, I’m a Ford guy. I have 3 Fords.

Here’s my pride and joy (1969 F100 4 x 4):

One of my first cars was a 1929 Model A. Irritates the hell out of me to run into this from Ford. Hopefully, it is an anomaly.