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Warning lights after driving with e-brake

Discussion in 'Gen 2 Prius Care, Maintenance and Troubleshooting' started by tomi, Apr 23, 2024.

  1. tomi

    tomi Junior Member

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    May 13, 2005
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    I have a 2004 Prius that is mostly my girlfriend's car. She never uses the emergency brake, but I'm a compulsive user of e-brakes, so this might be my fault. I drove it last night, and this morning she used it to take the cat to the vet. When she came back, she said it was running funny at first -- no power, slowed down drastically as soon as she let off the accelerator, etc., and that there were all kinds of warning lights. She said she pulled over and put the e-brake on and off, and after that the car ran OK but the warning lights were still on. My best guess is that the e-brake was on the whole time until she pulled over, and that was the cause of all the problems. From the symptoms she describes, it makes sense to me -- except for the warning lights.

    She drove less than 10 miles. The lights that are on are the big red triangle, the check-engine light, a yellow exclamation point, and one on the screen display that looks like a pinkish silhouette of a car with an exclamation point superimposed on it. (See pictures below.) I can't get it looked at by my mechanic until next week. I'm tempted to just unplug the battery overnight to re-set the lights, but then if it wasn't the e-brake, I'll be out of luck on finding out the real issue.

    Does anybody have any experience with this? The car was running fine until today. It's got a little over 120,000 miles on it, and I put in a new 12-volt battery about two years ago.

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  2. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    Vehicle:
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    IV
    Right, don't do that before knowing the trouble codes, or they'll be cleared and you lose your chance.

    You don't need any special tool to get the trouble codes from the brake system. Get those this way:

    Blink (a/k/a Flash) Codes – How to. | PriusChat