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Please help!! On vacation but now stranded in Montrose, CO. Dash lights on, not starting.

Discussion in 'Gen 2 Prius Main Forum' started by MrSteveB, Sep 23, 2016.

  1. MrSteveB

    MrSteveB Member

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    Good evening ladies and gentlemen I wish I was posting about something enjoyable instead of sitting in my car in an O'Reillys parking lot troubleshooting my car.
    I drove from Wyoming to south western Utah and have traveled through all of the major national parks and monuments on my way to Colorado. I was literally just telling my mom today how incredibly happy with this car I am and how I've had no major issues, until right now.
    I was driving up a hill in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. It was pretty hot out and I was running the air conditioner pretty hard. At the entrance station the car was running completely fine and I was waiting for the guy ahead of me to pull away and my dashboard lit up. See the picture of all the lights on. The car continued running fine so I pulled over to check the oil which was also fine. I went to start the car back up but nothing happens. The ready light does not come on nor does the speedometer read zero but the other lights on the dashboard do come on. I have searched other threads in this forum but have not found my exact symptoms one person did report the LG1 relay was bad and Toyota charged him quite a bit to find that out. I have pulled my codes tonight and O'Reilly really was absolutely no help telling me what the codes were which is fine. I have had to P1117 code come up before but it ended up being a bad connection. The codes are all listed in the pictures. There were five that came up total.
    This car has around 172,000 miles on it. The coolant was recently flushed as well as the CVT fluid being flushed as well. Any and all help will be extremely appreciated as I would really enjoy not taking this to the local Toyota dealership.
     

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  2. JC91006

    JC91006 Senior Member

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    There might be other codes to the car that the O'Reilly reader is not reading.

    How's the power brakes feel? There's an abs relay that needs to be changed out
     
  3. MrSteveB

    MrSteveB Member

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    The car won't power on even with the dash lights on. So they feel hard like they would if you depressed them with the car off.
    Yeah it's only a Bosch OBDII reader so I was thinking there might be more.
     
  4. JC91006

    JC91006 Senior Member

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    Well if you're stranded, reset the car and see how long it takes for the codes to come back.

    To reset the car, just unplug the 12v battery negative for a few seconds.

    Common failures are inverter coolant pumps and hv batteries that are over 150k miles.
     
  5. MrSteveB

    MrSteveB Member

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    I will give the reset a shot. The inverter pump is working. The 12v battery reads at 12.2v when in acc mode and then at 11.9 once the brake is pushed and the power button is pressed again. The park ranger did allow me to try a jump start when he was helping. During that time the battery was at 14.5 and it had the exact same symptoms.
     
  6. 2k1Toaster

    2k1Toaster Brand New Prius Batteries

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    Those codes are not very helpful without the full DTCs.

    When you have a serious fault, this lights up the dash and the car drives just fine. Then next power on, nothing. The codes need to be cleared fully before it will turn on. Not all codes do this. For example a failed traction battery will shut down and restart over and over. A HV isolation fault will cause a shutdown that is not recoverable until codes are cleared.

    You had this same problem 2.5 years ago (Check engine light for the first time. P1117 | PriusChat) so it is not easy to feel sorry for you. The car has been limping for 2.5 years and 64K miles without being fixed. What more could you ask for???

    To get you back on the road, disconnect the 12v. Wait for the car to die completely then plug 'er back in. Should clear all the codes including your auto window settings and radio presets. If that does not boot the car, then the fault is reoccurring on something that is checked upon boot.
     
  7. MrSteveB

    MrSteveB Member

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    Ooooookay series of events. Disconnected the ground and waited a couple mins. Reattached. Depressed brake and pushed power. All m the lights came back on excep the ! Triangle. while the car was still on I pushed the brake in again and pushed the power button again and all the lights cleared and the engine started up and ran for a bit like any other start up which is awesome. But what now? Do I stay at oreilly or just leave and hope for the best? Literally no warning lights on. I'm super hopeful but massively hesitant.
     

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  8. JC91006

    JC91006 Senior Member

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    It's late, you'll need to find what's wrong with the car. Some errors are ok to drive with, some are not.

    Need a proper diagnostic
     
  9. MrSteveB

    MrSteveB Member

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    [QUOTE="2k1Toaster, post: 2425209, member: 61950]
    You had this same problem 2.5 years ago (Check engine light for the first time. P1117 | PriusChat) so it is not easy to feel sorry for you. The car has been limping for 2.5 years and 64K miles without being fixed. What more could you ask for???
    [/QUOTE]
    thank you for the info. On this note that was replaced. But it turned out the sensor wasn't bad in the first place. I ran my car through a car wash very frequently in the winter and water was causing this sensor to read faulty. I pumped quite a bit of DI electric grease into the fitting and the code was cleared. Not sure why it's popping up again.
     
  10. MrSteveB

    MrSteveB Member

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    After much digging on this site tonight it looks like 12.2v in ACC mode and 11.9 with load is really subpar for what the 12v battery should be at. It also seems other people have experienced these odd symptoms from the 12v battery. Any thoughts about that?
     
  11. MrSteveB

    MrSteveB Member

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    Perhaps it's not that. Now that the car is running properly (so far) the 12v is at 14.1 while the car is in ready.
     
  12. EZDog

    EZDog New Member

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    There is a dealer right down the street from oreily.
    They have treated me well before.



    iPhone don't expect too much
     
  13. dolj

    dolj Senior Member

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    The problem isn't so much the voltages at rest, but what voltage it can hold under load. There is a short period where there is high Amp load in the start up cycle. If the battery is not up for the job, and drops to under 10.5 V, this is where strange things happen. Assuming that your battery can hold 11.5-11.9 V all that you need do is charge it up.
    14.1 indicates that the battery is under heavy charge due to being essentially flat. Once it is charged you should see 13.2-13.5 which indicates light charging.
     
    #13 dolj, Sep 24, 2016
    Last edited: Sep 24, 2016
  14. IMkenNY

    IMkenNY Im just being nosy

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    Because you were able to disconnect the 12v battery and bring your Prius back to life, I suspect you may be throwing a high voltage leak code.
    The dealership or eBay techstream software is what is needed to read a lot of the hybrid component codes whereas the OBDII reader that O'Reillys used is a good tool for engine codes
    If it is a HV leak code, it may be a failure in the AC compressor, transaxle, traction battery or inverter.
    Try a test drive without AC to see if the AC compressor is the culprit.
     
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  15. strawbrad

    strawbrad http://minnesotahybridbatteries.com

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    Plus one on the HV leak being a likely suspect. It's the only fault I know of that will let the car run normally until it's shut off.

    After disconnecting the 12 volt battery it always takes two pushes of the power button to start the car the first time.

    If you get the car back to MN I could help determine the cause.

    Brad
     
  16. 'LectroFuel

    'LectroFuel Senior Member

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    I had a problem with my '05 when I couldn't turn off the car when I pressed the power button. I unplugged the battery and everything worked fine after that. When in doubt, unplug the 12V. I'm not sure if it does any damage to the car.
     
  17. kevins007

    kevins007 Active Member

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    So is the car working now?