$5000 Transaxle assembly

Mel, take the offer for $2000. I would suggest towing the car to AutoBeYours in Scottsburg, IN for a high quality salvage replacement, but the cost would be about the same.

RE: Warranty. The transaxle is NOT a hybrid component outside of CARB states. Here, for example, is the warranty statement from a TSB for P0AA6.

APPLICABLE WARRANTY
• This repair is covered under the Toyota Powertrain Warranty. This warranty is in effect for 60
months or 60,000 miles, whichever occurs first, from the vehicle’s in-service date.
• For California specification vehicles sold, registered, and operated in California, Connecticut
(starting with ’05 MY), Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire (starting with ’05 MY), New
Jersey (starting with ’05 MY), New York, Oregon (starting with ’08 MY), Pennsylvania* (starting
with ’08 MY), Rhode Island (starting with ’05 MY), and Vermont, this repair is covered under
the California Emission Warranty. This warranty is in effect for 180 months or 150,000 miles,
whichever occurs first, from the vehicle’s in-service date.

 

Exactly. This is not caused by any fluid/winding interaction. If it was that means the winding conformal coating (very very tough) has failed and are exposed to the fluid. At that point it doesn't matter what kind of fluid is in there because at 200 to 500 AC volts its sure to flash over.

WS Fluid with heavy metal wear in solution does not cause any windings shorts. If it did Toyota would have a real business changing nightmare on there hands and you would be forced to keep ultra fresh cvt fluid in the car at all times which is simply not the case.
Most people who own this car never change the fluid and drive well into 150K plus miles with no issues. Most dealers scratch there head if you ask them about a trans fluid change. I can tell you the fluid has substantial wear on it at even 30,000 miles. Wear meaning its pretty diluted with metal. My point is very dirty fluid has no impact on the windings.

Whats happening is a winding overheats and gets very hot at its weakest point and the surrounding conformal coating fails and exposes the winding thats laying on top of it and the windings basicly melt and fuse together. The Inverter senses that out of phase and hi current draw and throws a CEL.
This winding overheat condition would happen by a heavy duty use of the MG either by continuous hills with low battery or a lifetime of abuse or poor maintenance and or Inverter coolant failure. It happens by the electric motor drawing more current at a duration it was not designed for. The weakest link for failure on hi current draw is somewhere in the windings. Nothing to do with the fluid.
I notice the majority of cvt failures we see here are on used cars
with the present owner not knowing about its history.

It does help to keep fresh trans fluid in the cvt to eliminate any mechanical stress on the internal drivetrain.

 

Disturbing. Somewhere in its life it became very unhappy. Here's some questions as I am curious:

Are you the only driver in the house?
Did you have the Inverter coolant pump replaced under service bulletin warranty?
On the occasional hills mentioned did it ever struggle getting over a hill requiring you to floor it to make it?
And what have been any issues with the car requiring dealer service?

And if you have "metal bits" in the fluid thats a whole other story.
You wouln't have bits in the fluid without a mechanical failure of gear or chain or bearing and you would know that so forget that.
You would know that as the trans would make a loud noise.

But analysis of the fluid would be very interesting and we would all appreciate that.
I used wearcheck.com and they were good.

 

It is a problem with the Prius, if not other cars as well, that many sensors will not trigger a warning light until the damage is already been done. The oil pressure and coolant temperature warning lights come to mind.

 

In addition, there could have been a manufacturing defect or damage in one of the MGs. It does happen, even with the best designs and manufacturers. Sometimes you just win the reverse lottery and get the one failure in a million.

Tom

 

Of course it is. You could easily sell this car for more than $5000, so even if you hate the car and I bet you do now (I would, too), get it repaired and sell it.

At the very least you should call Toyota warranty service and they may be kind enough to go splits (seriously).

 

I can't offer any explanation as to why that happened but it is unfortunate. I hope this will be your last problem for many years.

 

Yes I neglected to mention what Tom posted also. That your car may have had a failure of the windings through simple years of use. There may be a spot on one of the windings that has become corroded or even a wire imperfection and the winding wire breaks. Since the ends are touching there will be sparking and to anyone who inspects it with a trans teardown that will look like a winding blowout due to a burnt spot from the wire arcing.

Doesn't have to neccessarily have 2 windingd fuse together.

Or it may be a bad connection on one of the 3 phase wires anywhere in the harness from Inverter to motor.
3 phase motor control is used becausee its effient and the motor is very smooth no vibrations as the motor is very balanced compared to a single phase motor and its easy to control the voltage.
The way they fail is usually lose a phase and then the other phases become very unbalanced and start pulling current. The phases that are unbalanced usually pull so much current they blow out a winding. This happens really fast and leads to the windings fused together scenario. So you usually have 2 events. A phase loss and a high current event on the other 2 legs.

This unbalance causes what may posters with failed trans's call "humming".
The inverter then starts pulling back on the current to save itself and you have a car with no power and a bad trans.

 

Of course you should fix it. Think calmly about what sort of replacement car you could buy for $5000 (or is it now $2000?): a 12 year old Civic? Maybe a seven year old Kia? One-quarter or less of a brand new Whatever?