Desperate! Transmission problem?

I would take it to a auto zone or advance auto parts and have them try and read the code to see if they come up with something. I hope you didn't pay much for it since there are many used cars out there.

 

I don't know what the laws are in Ohio, but contact whoever you bought the car from and see if you can reverse the deal, before it's too late. Not knowing anything about the car it's impossible to guess. One option, take it to a Toyota Dealership and see if they will give you a no/low cost diagnosis. see if you can get the seller to reverse the sale first. The repair could cost only a Thousand or as much as Five Thousand.
Next time you go shopping for a used car, take a knowledgeable person with you, OR at the very least, see if you can get the car inspected by a firm that specializes in Auto Diagnostics. I think they charge about $100 for this service.
2004 Prius is now 10 years old and you don't know who owned it or how well they maintained it. There is also some specialty knowledge that one must have with the Prius? Good. luck?

 

What you describe sounds exactly like a hybrid system malfunction. Now this could be no problem or could be a serious problem.

Contrary to popular belief, the check engine light (CEL) is not just a suggestion. It is a warning of imminent doom. It is telling you "hey buddy, I just suffered something super serious here, get off the road now while you still can before you can't". It is not an invitation to drive the car daily and pretend nothing is wrong. That would be the "Maintenance Required" light which can be safely ignored if you are religious about maintenance, specifically oil changes. But the "Maintenance Required" light can usually be ignored for a few hundred miles or a few weeks with little to no difference. CEL must be taken care of immediately!

Your symptoms are characteristic of a hot battery, hot inverter, or bad battery.

If the inverter is hot, you don't move fast or at all. There is a recall on the GenII's for the inverter coolant pump. Toyota will for free replace the pump, even if it is not an issue. But to check, turn the car to READY. Pop the hood and look in the inverter coolant resevoir. You should see slight (usually very slight) turmoil in the coolant. If you see no movement, no bubbles, no waves, your pump is dead. Toyota will most likely replace for free if the recall hasn't been done. Every time you take the inverter to its thermal shutdown point, you are degrading the overall life of the unit. So stop doing that. Total cost, close to $0. But if the inverter has been irreparably damaged, then it gets tricky. $250 for an eBay junkyard pull, $4000 for a dealership replacement.

If the battery is hot, you should hear the fan running by the back seat. The car will react very sluggishly and the engine will rev really high and make a lot of noise but not really go anywhere too fast. Passenger rear seat by the window, by the seatbelt you should see a vent. That is what cools the hybrid battery. If the battery is hot, and you aren't at the equator, then you could possibly have a clogged fan. Hot batteries mean early death for batteries. So fix it right away. Most of the time that fan should be silent. This time of the year in CO, the only time I hear the fan is if I am doing the ski passes where I am constantly draining and filling the battery to the max over huge mountain passes. In the summer, it will come on if left to bake outside for a while. In your climate, I don't know what would be normal. Next time the power sapping event occurs, turn off the radio, roll up the windows, turn off the HVAC. Make the car silent. Pull over if necessary. And listen... Go put your ear over the vent in the back. If that's it, then you have a hot battery. If the previous owner (or any of them) have had hairy dogs riding back there, it is most likely completely clogged with hair. If they had spawn, who knows what is down there, maybe a bunch of cheerios. There is no filter. Take it apart and clean it. The dealer charges about $450 (my coworker had them do it) to clean the fan. You can do it yourself in an hour with youtube and some cleaning gear.

If the battery itself is bad, you will see it go from green to blue to purple and back again very quickly and often. The Prius when happy will maintain the charge in the middle of the display, the blue region. 3bars to 6 bars. If the battery is low, you get 2 purple bars, or 1 purple/pink bar. If it is full, you get 7 green bars or 8 green bars. At 1 purple/pink and 8 green bars, the engine will turn on. At 1 bar, it turns on to charge the battery and you loose all performance. At 8 bars it spins the engine as an air pump to waste power and get the battery down to 7 bars. There are lots of tests you can do. Salvage pulls on eBay can be had a for a couple hundred dollars. Rebuilt packs in the $1500 range. Replacement new packs from Toyota dealership are about $3500 installed.

Hopefully some of this is helpful, and with a little more careful diagnosis you can be on your way.

 

I had my car (highlander hybrid) diagnosed 2 years after I bought it from the dealer when it had 94k miles on it. They did not charge me. I never pay to find out the problem. And since you just bought it I would think you might be able to return it as a lemon unless it was an as-is sale. Even if it was an as-is I would see if the law had a policy to gaurentee it.

 

All used cars sales are As-Is unless otherwise stated. Unless there was a material misrepresentation of the vehicle, no consumer protection laws will help here. And since the OP has admitted to buying it with the CEL on, there is absolutely no recourse. Had the CEL come on as he drove home from the sail and it was proven the seller cleared it knowingly before selling, that is fraud and you can rescind the contract. Otherwise, buyer beware.

 

The Prius is not your normal everyday car. the CEL on a Prius means something. It can also mean the gas cap.

The Prius also doesn't have a "transmission". It is a single statically geared planetary gear system. There is only 1 gear, and it is always engaged, no way to disengage it or change it. Speed and directionality are determined by how the two electric motor generators (MG1 and MG2) as well as the combustion engine (ICE) work together.

To have a speed limit below flat out (~112mph) suggests something is wrong in entire system. You wouldn't be able to move at all if MG2 was bad. You wouldn't be able to go in reverse if MG1 was bad. You wouldn't be able to go above 62mph if the ICE never turned on. Other than that, it is not as simple as a "this is broke, so this is the top speed" like in a car where 3rd gear doesn't work you can just say it only goes up to the highest revs on 2nd gear before you have to jump a gear. Prius doesn't work even remotely close to that.

 

Its hard to pinpoint without the codes but your symptoms sound to me like you are having a hybrid battery issue and it's putting the car into limp mode.

 

You can see it only if you know what you are looking for.

A permanently "green" battery is bad. You want the battery to be in the 3-6 bar (blue) state. If it is perpetually higher or lower, bad juju

 

Good Luck.
I'm just going to say, and I don't mean to sound insulting, but given your lack of knowledge about Prius and what you are driving, I would just take it to a dealership and have it diagnosed. Yes, it is going to cost some money.

Fantastic 80% of time...terrifying the rest of the time....is not an acceptable ownership scenario. You can't and shouldn't live with how the vehicle behaves right now.

Since it really sounds like you are on a budget, I wish you the best of luck. But whether you have made a mistake in purchase or not, the first step will be finding out exactly what is going on.

It's too late now, but I would never recommend that someone take out a loan, to purchase a higher mileage used Prius, demonstrating odd driving symptoms, with the check engine light on.

In my opinion, as a hybrid a Prius accelerates differently than a singular internal combustion engine vehicle, but no, it is not "common" that a Prius is hesitant to accelerate.

I think you could discover any level of problem here, but hopefully you find that the resolution is something possible and doable on your budget. Because I'm afraid it's too late now, you own the vehicle, and whatever problems it might of come with.

 

My fingers are crossed for you Kelsey.
I drove my Subaru for some five years with a CEL lit so I can understand why you might guess it can be ignored in a Prius, but as stated earlier that is much less likely to be true in a Prius.

Get a diagnosis, or preferably engine codes, and we'll try to help you from there.

 

What you are doing when you power the car OFF and then back to Ready, is a Minor reboot. Another more effective reboot is to disconnect the Neg. terminal on the 12 V battery, for at least 3 seconds, 10 seconds should be fine. You may want to do this 2-3 times. I corrected my programming many time on my 2005 by doing this. Make sure the 12V battery post are clean and tight. A battery terminal brush is good to carry.

 

Well said. I have made some stupid used cars choices in the past, but taking chances with prius is very risky. I'm actually astounded by the amount of money people pay for used prius with high miles, considering that those cars could be needing new battery anytime soon.

 

Doesnt a dirty or sticking throttle body display this same kind of symptom sometimes? Im surprised nobody has offered the OP to check the "basics".

 

No, the basics is to read that frigging code and see what's wrong with the car (preferably before paying for it).