Yesterday was a 15 hour round trip, just for fun. Three unfortunate incidents occurred. Firstly, my windshield was hit with a fairly big rock, flung out by the truck in front of me. It w.as spreading fast, so i found the nearest glass shop, where he applied the glue and drilled the end of the spreading crack. He didn't charge me anything, because he said it will probably spread. The good news is that it hasn't spread in 24 hours. I'm hoping it will last another year or two. Second, I lost all power to the 12V power socket. I assumed (correctly) a faulty fuse, and I was fortunate to have someone replace it for me in under an hour. I had wasted over half an hour trying to find the fuse location and gave up. Well worth the $35. Thirdly, I noticed my cooler had stopped working. The auxiliary battery I had installed was dead flat. I found out why; it was no longer connected to the 12V system. Apparently the dealer had left everything unplugged in a contemptuous fashion, as they often do. I'll have a job today connecting it back up. They do say that bad things happen in threes. :-/
This dealer doesn't want any feedback, otherwise I'd tell them to stop blaming the customer for everything.
I don' t really need to know, but if I have to, I'll call that guy who was able to look it up. I couldn't find it anywhere. I do know, it's under the dash, where I can't get to it.
It's called the Power Distribution Box Assembly and it's attached to the Main Body ECU. Being a fuse panel is only one of its jobs. Just do a google search to find a video showing a Toyota PDBA or interior fuse panel. They're pretty much all in the same place. And it's location is in the owners manual, of course.
No luck using google with the term power distribution box (PDB) for a gen 5 prius. Found it for earlier model prius, but not gen 5.
Which is good enough because it's in basically the same place on most modern Toyotas. Under the dash, just to the left of the steering column. Just stick your head under the dash and look up. There's a white rectangular cover with the fuses labeled on it. Easy enough to spot because most everything else up there is black. Pop off the cover and the fuses are underneath. If you need to pull one, grab the fuse puller from the engine compartment fuse box because there is no way to pull one of those tiny things with your fingers.
I think I've gone full circle with the parasitic drain problem; I have found some workarounds. Using the SE charger maintains the 12 V battery in the short term. In the longer term, I use a NOCO Genius 5 maintainer. If I'm not near an outlet, I can switch power back from my auxiliary battery. If that fails, I have 2 battery booster packs in the car, a cheap one in the glove box, and a better one in the back.
