car starts but dies when putting in gear--need opinions!

Howdy,

I have a 2001 prius with just over 61k miles on it. I had the 60k service performed at 60k....

Recently, the car "broke down". It was driving just fine on the freeway but then "stuttered" a little bit. Within a mile, all power was lost. We coasted to the shoulder and parked/shut down the car. We then tried to start it again. It would start up but when we put it in gear, the gas motor would shut off and all the warning lights would come on (triangles of death...). Same behavior over and over again.

Had the car towed to the dealership. They are looking into it.

Anyone here have any ideas?

thanks,
cj

 

going to have the stealership throw in a new battery. They say it is one of the orig model batteries but I could have sworn that the PO told me they recently replaced the battery.

Also, the service guy told me a couple of things....

car throws a diag code of 1128 which I can't find referenced anywhere....

also, they found a piece of plastic in my throttle body that should not be there (looks like debris) and they can't find where it might have come from upstream.... They removed this but the behavior is still the same.

I am also having them make sure that my oil level is not over the full mark after reading some of the posts on this forum! This dealership did my 60k (with oil change) about 3 weeks ago.

Open to more ideas!!!

thanks,
cj

 

So the tech pulled the plastic debris out of my throttle body and cleaned the TB. They disconnected my battery and bench trickle charged it and put it back in... they drove it around a bunch of times yesterday and everything works perfectly.

I am going to pick up the car this morning. Time will tell!

thanks for all your help!

cj

 

The tech looked upstream for where the plastic piece may have come from.... He could not find any missing pieces or holes/entry points.

car is running fine right now. I put about 50 miles on it today without any issue.

thanks,
cj