Inverter Coolant Pump

A few weeks to a couple years it just depends It seemed to failure rates on these are real high no matter who makes them supposedly except for the one from the Toyota dealer. Hard to believe but so far looks to be factual you don't really have to do all that disassembly to take the thing out but whatever you've done at work so it doesn't matter I just use a long extension and undo the three gold bolts lift the pump literally off of its bracket pull the hoses off with my hand they're squeeze clamps let the pink liquid run into a small jug is only a few ounces said it aside finish changing the pump screw the new one in fill the jug with fluid. Put the car in the ready mode the pump is running I get out and see the pump is suck the jug almost to the bottom I add more pink stuff while the pump is still running it's circulating what I'm pouring in through the system I pour it slowly till I get to the full mark and stop and I just watch the pump run It never moves off the full mark that means it's bled the waterway is completely full and you hear the pump circulating the coolant watch it for another few seconds but the cap on and you're done clear the code and go apparently these cheap pancake pumps are made with such inferior parts boards and pieces that they just can't last even though water never gets into the pump it's like a mag drive pond pump the impeller never sees a shaft or a penetration from the motor or windings or the electrical part into the pump body. So there's no reasoning to me that this should be happening unless they are made this way on purpose to fail just because. I got rid of that flat pancake pump and put in another pump and it's been going strong for about 4 months now where the other pancakes would fail in 90 days no noise no running no nothing as soon as I put another pump in that wasn't made for that application everything started working a lot better stays a lot cooler water moves or coolant moves a lot better so no more use for the pancake pump for me first mod for this Toyota for us and it seems positive

 

If it works, then great. A number of people have reported aftermarket pumps that would occasionally decide to not pump. Power cycle a few times and it might work again, - or not.

It ain't worth my time to save a few bucks vs. dealing with a inverter overheat at some inconvenient point. For me, the OE part is fine.

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I had one of the "sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't" pumps. PITA. Car overheats, pull over. Turn it off, let it cool a while. Think, better check the tank to see if the pump is working. Turn it back on - fluid in tank is moving. Must be something else, right? Wrong, because the pump decided to work again on the next start.

The OEM pumps seem to be reliable. In this case, worth every penny.

 

If you are saying that the impeller is driven by magnetic induction, I can think of a few ways a poorly manufactured part could fail, especially with that design. It explains how you can feel the vibrations from the motor running and yet it little to no volume of coolant through it.

 

Yep, the impeller has a circular permanent magnet. The rectangular base has the electronics PCB that drives a couple electromagnetic coils. All the electronics is completely sealed.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

Funny thing is my $20 cheap washer machine pump out pumps seem to last 20 years I'm trying to think that I bought some online in about 12-13 years ago they're still going strong just got to clean the quarters and hair out of them once in awhile of course they're only pumping the washing machine out three times a cycle or whatever it is and we do wash a lot of clothes so don't know I just think it's amazing that there's one application seems to have horrific failure rates with the pumps made for the aftermarket that's just pretty sad

 

Pumps made 12-13 years ago may have been made to a higher quality standard than most pumps are now.

Washing machine pumps don't see nearly as many hours of use as the cooling pumps in most Prius vehicles. Our washing machine at home, for instance, on a typical load pumps for about 3 minutes 3 times. So 9 minutes a day. Our Prius is running at least 5 hours a week. (Much more this week, as I am on a long trip.) The pumps on the washing machine are probably designed to handle "chunks" (hair, bits of cloth, and so forth) better than the pump on a Prius. The Prius is on its 4th pump (including the Dorman), whereas the washing machine still has its original pump (27 years old).

Conversely, the lid sensor on our washing machine has failed several times, whereas only one door sensor switch on any of our cars have gone bad in that period. One might have thought that being repeatedly struck by a relatively heavy car door would be harder on a switch mechanism than the relatively light washing machine lid. In this instance I think the car switches are just a more sturdy design, using a much bigger "plunger" to detect door motion.

 

I'd say the car switches are just more simply built. They don't switch very much current, and only at 12 volts, and they are rarely much more than a spring-loaded plunger with a contact on the end that touches grounded metal when the door's open.

It doesn't matter much how hard the heavy door strikes it, because closing the door only opens the switch, pushing the contacts apart. It's when you open the door that the contacts come together, but only under the force of the spring on the plunger, regardless of how violently you open the door.

I think washing machine lid switches have typically been snap-action microswitches, the kind of thing that can interrupt the current drawn by a washing machine and do it at 120 volts, with an internal spring that makes it 'snap' open and closed to minimize arcing. There's just more there that's prone to wearing out. (And even with the snap action, there tends to be enough minor arcing to eventually kind of mess with the condition of the contacts.)

 

I just got rid of that design and went to something else seems to be holding up well The requirements for the inverter pump seem to be minimal The pump I'm using moves the water a little faster so never gets to the temperature it used to I do know that other than that all I know is it keeps working and not breaking

 

Love to know what you used.

 

Well I'll tell you on the generation 2 if you look in between the brake master cylinder the part that's on the firewall connected to your pedal but under the hood the brake master cylinder and the accumulator there's a pump sitting almost dead center a little lower than the brake master cylinder the part this mounted on the firewall and about level with the brake actuator I'm not even sure what the pump is there for I don't really care I took a punk from that space not in my car because my car needs the pump there but from another donor car looks like a little tiny might circulation pump from a spa if you Google that you'll see the pump except mine isn't red it's rated 14.4 volts not the 12 volts that the pump in the fender well for the coolant tank is I don't know why there's two different voltage ratings for these two pumps don't care I took the pump from between the brake parts under the hood and put it where my inverter pancake was leaving the inverter pancake bracket and everything still sitting there because I can go right back to the pancake if somebody ever finds one whatever and then the hoses that went to the inverter pump or stock except from the one coming from the radiator that runs along the core support I cut another piece of hose out of another car modified it and plugged it in keeping the original hose in my garage if I want to go back and that was that that pump was free and it's been sitting there running ever since I cut I remove the plug with the pump so I can splice the wires from my cars factory pancake pump plug to the new pump.

 

I found myself stuck during a long drive because of that pump. It went and I was lucky to have a dealer 20minutes away $500 later and one day lost it was back on the road. On the next car I went oem and treated it like a 200k mile maintenance item. It’s not hard to replace but hard enough it makes sense to do it once to me

 

Wow unless I was in Arizona I would have been able to drive that car almost all the way to North Carolina just have to monitor it Make sure it doesn't overheat usually you can see that on your battery charging and if you like me traveling mostly an evening at night when it's 100° during the day makes a huge difference you'll be able to cruise along at 65 for hours at a time without anything getting too hot I was really surprised by that too I have to really do some work with the pump not working to get the thing to start stepping back on its charging of the HV battery I had to really drive like an asshat or whatever.

 

Probably days before my trip I did mention that if this car breaks down I would be completely blind in terms of what the cause is. That pump is a good example. A warning light with no indication of rising temperature. Probably a good practice to carry along the torque app and an OBDII plug... and monitor things like you were saying. In my current prius I just replaced both the water pump and inverter pump with OEM. It wasn't too expensive and now I can forget about it. Under $200 for both pumps

 

This. Also, ideally, an app able to read trouble codes from all of the car. I'm not sure about the torque app; it might be able to get codes but only from some of the car. But there might be another app than can get them all and even work with the same dongle that works with torque.

As you've seen, the car has some warning lights but they're only there to tell you there are trouble codes. There are far too many of those to have a light for every one, so you just need to get the codes to find out what the issue is.

Monitoring things can be useful, and sometimes it'll help you guess what an issue is—if the issue is related to something you already were monitoring, and if you notice the monitored value being weird. Otherwise, well, there's still always the trouble codes.

 

The triangle and lights came on a couple of times but when I started the car next day no lights were on the dash on my 2006 Prius with 180k mi. However, I run a health check with Techstream and I got the P0A93 code both current and history. I was surprised the triangle and check light remained off. Anyway, I decided to change the inverter pump and go from there.

Since the risk of overheating and burning the expensive inverter is high, I ordered one $25 inverter pump delivered overnight. Then, I read this thread and later some one star reviews and realized that the cheap pump would fail soon while the OEM lasted about 14 years or 140-150k miles. I had done the recall on year 3 or 4. I went to my local Toyota dealer got an OEM for $130 plus a gallon of coolant and a washer. I am returning the unopened box with the cheap $25 inverter pump.

I spent 2.5 hours to remove the front headlight, emptying the inverter coolant, replacing the pump and bracket (which was rusted), air bleed the system and clear the code. I hope the code will not come back and the OEM inverter coolant pump will last for many years again.