openinverter forum

I am new to the forums, but have long since fantasized about building my own EV. I'm pretty handy around cars in general, but I've always wrenched on ICE vehicles. I've wanted to get started just by purchasing an A/C motor and play with a control board on the bench to get started. I have settled on Prius stuff to get started because it is so inexpensive - I picked up a Gen 3 transaxle on Sunday for $50! The donor car had lost the ICE motor and the guy just purchased a whole drivetrain on a pallet and was looking to quickly move the old transaxle.

Anyway, my next step will be to look for an inverter to power it. I think the obvious choice is to get a Gen 3 Prius inverter. However, I'm aware of the shortcomings of the Gen 3 cars include inverter troubles - particular in the 2010 and 2011 cars I think. My question would be, should I avoid these necessarily? What are the weak points exactly and if I bought a "bad" one are they typically easily repairable if I'm cracking it open anyway?

I thought it might be best to seek wisdom of the forum and narrow my search accordingly, but if there aren't huge worries for certain model year inverters, then I might be able to shop on price as priority over year.

Secondarily, while I'm asking questions, my motor only has 3 phase cables attached... my local wrecker has plenty of Gen 2 cars... are the electrical connectors on those interchangeable with the Gen 3 transaxles? I'll most certainly need some pig tails for things like the park gear motor and resolvers.

Thanks,
Larry

Larry, where in the world are you? I *think* some of my cables are for a Gen3, but were mis-identified when I purchased them.

In the USA Toyota had a recall on the certain Gen3 inverters, I would certainly avoid ones from the models affected; that may be moot as they are about 3x the cost of the Gen2 or later model inverters any way.

I am in the Atlanta, GA metro area... I just figured out how to set location in my profile. Priusus are fairly plentiful here - I can get an inverter out the door for $100, but most cars on the lot are gen 2 cars. There's a gen 3 farther away, but I'll guess it has been picked over already, but could be a good source of the connectors if they are unique.

Hey u make any progress? Looking at using 4 of these for a 40ft solar rock crawling rv

ZooKeeper wrote: ↑Tue Dec 21, 2021 11:54 pm Larry, where in the world are you? I *think* some of my cables are for a Gen3, but were mis-identified when I purchased them.

In the USA Toyota had a recall on the certain Gen3 inverters, I would certainly avoid ones from the models affected; that may be moot as they are about 3x the cost of the Gen2 or later model inverters any way.

Was the affected models issue a hardware or firmware issue like if firmware, is there a reflash new unaffected firmware option?