dead. just dead. battery? or??

I followed this thread through because we just had a variant on this experience and wanted to get folks thoughts.
We have jumped our '07 prius (73k) once before, 1.5 years ago. This AM we go out and it is dead, no lock response, no map lights. We haul out the jumpers, pop the hood, grab a neighbor, 10 minutes later we BARELY connect the positive jumper (very tiny sparking just as we connect the negative), check ourselves on polarity (all good), and press the power. Lights and dash lights come-on (blinking). In a hurry for work, the neighbor removes the jumpers, and in seconds the dash lights fade and go off. After reconnecting the cables (another 10 minutes) we try again....nothing, check connection and reconnect, hit the Prius power again,...nothing. I remove and reconnect the jumper but notice even when I am not so careful this time there is no sparking as I attached the negative. Try the power button with the foot on the brake...nothing. Remove the cables from the prius, and just to make sure we had a good connection with the neighbors battery I brought the two ends of the cables close to eachother...v-big sparks...so clearly getting plenty off his running car. Neighbor left, ran inside read the rest of several threads. I got another neighbor to help, went back out, put the fob in the ignition (we have SKS and did not have the fob in the slot previously), attached a solid steel locking needlenose plier to the positive terminal, and re-attached the jumpers to it and the neg terminal (no sparking). Pressed the power-button with foot on the brake....nothing. I checked the fuses next to the positive terminal, couldn't find any fuses labeled above 75, but all the fuses looked v. solid (clean, no melting, fusing, or scorching). Removed the jumpers from the prius (no sparking), and attached the positive directly to the tiny positive bolt (no sparking) and tried the PARK and then the power one last time...nothing. After removing the cables from the prius, I test for a good connection off the neighbors car by sparking the jumper leads (v. big sparks again), thank him. I couldnt remove the fob (expected), & called the tow to our local prius trained repair shop. Now that we are out $250 for the tow, likely another $160 for the battery, plus the labor on the diagnosis, here is my question:

Given that the jumps worked once, never again, and never did the tiny sparks thing again, I am guessing we are no longer forming a complete circuit IN our prius. My gut says blown fuse, but I see no other evidence of that.
What could cause a dead battery to jump once and never again? Did the fob not being in the dash slot the first several times have anything to do with it?

 

just heard back from our local shop. He said the battery was completely flat and the front of the car terminals had too much resistance and that plus a poor jumper connection for too short time meant not enough amps getting to the battery. I dont know if I buy that "too much resistance", but he has it running and I never did. BTW he quoted $190 on a toyota battery +1 day delivery. He said he hasnt seen too many prius 12V dead, but our area has not had many prius owners, and none until last 5 years. I also know this battery went dead at least once possibly twice before and we didnt know/do the proper recharge. Having jumped them twice and read-up extensively, I cant say I am at all satisfied with the product design for jumping and troubleshooting. argh.. lost wages and repair costs =$1000 for efficiency over reliability. Still don't know what caused the draw down in the first place.

 

1. During your first jumpstart attempt, did the Prius ever become READY?

2. If your 12V battery is original equipment then it is around 6 years old and past-due for replacement.

3. If the 12V battery had one or more shorted cells, that would place a very heavy load on the 12V bus which could prevent the car from starting if the various ECUs could not receive adequate voltage to properly boot up.

4. Glad to hear that your mechanic was able to get the car running, that proves that no permanent damage was caused by your jumpstart procedure.

5. I don't believe that having the fob in or out of the slot made a difference - unless the very low voltage on the 12V bus prevented the Smart ECU from working.

 

1. A dead battery can become a load. If sufficient, this load can drag down the 12V bus and keep a Prius from powering up when jumping.

2. Never spark jumper cables, especially if they attached to anything I own. Modern electronics do not take kindly to voltage transients, and sparking jumper cables is an excellent way to generate big transients on the 12V bus.

Tom

 

Plus, if you spark at the battery, the danger of igniting any hydrogen gas that might be present. An exploding lead-acid battery can ruin your whole day.

 

Just had a "dead battery" experience in my 2010, which just happened to occur on the day that I had the windshield replaced because of a crack that I got in it a couple of days earlier.

Started the car up w/o any apparent problem and rolled the car out onto the driveway so that the window installers could work on it. Left it there for about 6 hours after the window was replaced before trying to back it into the garage. No power, zilch! Just a couple of dash lights came on bu then died away. Thought that was odd and was tempted to blame the window installer for the problem but had no proof of that and "blaming" them wouldn't solve the problem.

Knew where the battery was but couldn't open the rear hatch. So, had to crawl in via the back door to pull out the floor panel and storage bin to get at it. Before I pulled it out to recharge it, tried doing a jump. Found the jump terminal and hooked it up to the other car car in my garage -- a Toyota MR2 Spyder. The battery in the MR2 was at full charge but the jump didn't work. So, a recharge as the only option.

At first, I was going to recharge the battery in place w/a Battery Tender that I always have hooked up to the MR2 but then decided to take it out instead of leaving the car open and running a 120v cord outside, because of the change of rain. Easily removed the battery and set it up for recharge in my garage. It took 2 full days of charging on the Battery Tender (rated at 1.25 amps) to bring the battery back up to 13.5v capacity.

The instructions in the manual for recharging and reinstalling the battery AND for restarting the car are obscure and very poorly organized. When I reinstalled the battery everything powered up fine and the only thing I lost were my radio channels. I also ran the car through all of the drive/park positions, as instructed in the manual.

So, everything is fine now, but I'm still perplexed about "why" the battery went dead. Very odd. Never had a battery problem w/my 2006 Prius and I owned that car for 4 years before trading it in for the 2010 which I lease now. Oh well, at least the battery went dead in my driveway and not somewhere else that would have required me to tow it to my house or worst, the dealer.

 

I assume you know about the jump point located under the hood. It's generally a lot easier to use that than crawl into the back and manually release the hatch, unless, of course, you can't get to the front of the car.

Tom

 

When they replaced the windscreen they probably had both front doors open for the whole time, this would have put the dome lights and door lights on discharging the battery that may not have been in a good state of charge anyway.

The battery tender although rated at 1.25 amps will not usually put out full current "the rating being the maximum output".

If it managed to put out 1 amp a 40 amp/hr battery would take 40 hrs if the charging were 100% efficient. This from a 10.6 volt level of charge "the voltage considered to be for a 12 volt battery fully discharged". Your battery could have been at the 5 or 6 volt level.

 

I'm posing here because I think/hope I would end up here with my problem anyway!

I have a 2007 Prius, no smart key, on the original 12v battery. (I've owned it for two years and I haven't replaced it in that time - I haven't checked yet but I assume the battery is factory-issue).

Had a problem a couple of days ago where it was possible to unlock the car, pop the key in, press the start button and green LED would illuminate. At that stage it was possible to turn the radio on. Press it again - and nothing: no 0 on the speedometer, no gear selector display, nothing on the big touchscreen. After about an hour of inserting and reinserting the key, pressing on P (park) button, depressing foot brake and general random fiddling, it fired up. Since then, it's been absolutely fine, and I have started/driven the car 4 or 5 times without any hesitation in starting or other unusual behaviour.

You might usually assume it's a dying battery - after all, we have had 5-6 years out of it, so it's about time it died. But here's the thing:

- the car had been driven for an hour or so earlier in the same day (so it would be fully charged, right?)
- the time when the car wouldn't start was 4pm on one of the hottest summer days of the year so far here in Sydney (and isn't it usually cold winter mornings when weak batteries finally die?)
- another driver of the car reported a similar thing happening a few months ago (so if the battery were dying then, wouldn't it have died already?)
- the car eventually fired up and hasn't been a problem since (so if it were a weak battery, wouldn't it continue to be weak and not start the car rather than "recovering"?)

What do you guys think? I am overthinking it and should I just head out and buy a replacement battery because it sounds like a battery problem? (I have emailed the local Toyota dealer for a price for battery replacement - it has to go in for the two recalls anyway). Or does it sound like it could be something completely different? Obviously now it has "fixed" itself again we can't recreate the problem for a mechanic...

Thanks in advance, and thanks for all the useful info that's on here - have read Priuschat many times before but never needed to ask questions!

Edit: I do apologise. I searched the forum again with slightly different questions and came across the battery test thread here: Weird stuff happening? MPGs dropping? Test The Battery | PriusChat I will do that tonight and post back with my results.

 

You probably will need a new battery in the near future, but this sounds like a loose connection at the positive or negative posts on the battery or the other end of the negative cable where it connects to the body of the car.

Clean and redo those three connections. I think you'll find that one or more of them was dirty or loose. Of course, if you have a volt meter, you can check the condition of the battery.

 

Thanks, koolingit, I will give that a look in a few minutes when I get home!

 

Hmm, so...I went home, checked the battery compartment, did jdenenberg's battery DIY test procedure, went for a 20km drive (including 10km on the freeway at about 70-80kph), parked and then redid the DIY test procedure.

Observations are:

1) the battery terminals and the earth are perfectly clean and secure. This was a shame because it could have been an easy fix if they weren't!

2) 1st battery test procedure results are (in bold):

DO-IT-YOURSELF TEST PROCEDURE:
- Without brake pedal, press the Power button once and release to enter ACC mode
- Press and hold the MFD Info button, then turn the headlights on and off three times to enter Maintenance mode; release Info button
- Press “Menu” (on screen)
- Press “Display Check”
- Press “Vehicle Signal Check” - the battery voltage is shown and should be about 12.4 to 12.8 Volts (normal for an unloaded battery) Vehicle read 12.1-12.2v steadily.
- Again without brake pedal, press Power button and release to put a current load on the battery - the voltage should stay above 12.0V (if less than 12.0V the battery is not well, or there is a fault or unusual load somewhere) Vehicle read 11.9v or 11.8 if brake pedal depressed (but not put into Ready mode).
- Press brake pedal and press Power button once to enter "Ready" mode - the battery is now charging at about 14V (if less than 13.6V or more than 14.4 there may be a problem with the charging circuit) Vehicle read 13.9 mostly, flickered up to 14.0 a couple of times, and read 13.8 after gas/petrol engine started up.
- Turn car OFF to leave Maintenance mode
3) 2nd battery test procedure results were (in bold):

- Without brake pedal, press the Power button once and release to enter ACC mode
- Press and hold the MFD Info button, then turn the headlights on and off three times to enter Maintenance mode; release Info button
- Press “Menu” (on screen)
- Press “Display Check”
- Press “Vehicle Signal Check” - the battery voltage is shown and should be about 12.4 to 12.8 Volts (normal for an unloaded battery) Vehicle read 12.3v and flickered a little to 12.2v.
- Again without brake pedal, press Power button and release to put a current load on the battery - the voltage should stay above 12.0V (if less than 12.0V the battery is not well, or there is a fault or unusual load somewhere) Vehicle read 11.9v-12.0v.
- Press brake pedal and press Power button once to enter "Ready" mode - the battery is now charging at about 14V (if less than 13.6V or more than 14.4 there may be a problem with the charging circuit) Vehicle read 13.8 mostly, but flickered at 14.0 and 13.8v.
- Turn car OFF to leave Maintenance mode

What do we think, guys? On one hand, it's not the slam dunk indication of a bad battery, but on the other hand it's consistently low in the acceptable range or slightly below it. Do you think a battery in this condition could prevent a start for an hour or so?

 

I wouldn't say it's a slam dunk that the battery is bad, but it's definitely a bit weak. Actually those are identical readings to what my 12V battery measures. Again that doesn't mean that it's good, but it's probably not bad enough to cause your previous problems (in my opinion). Especially considering that your car had been driven only an hour previous to the problems occurring.

One possibility to consider is that perhaps you just left a door ajar (or some similar electrical load) for that one hour between drives. Given your somewhat weak battery this could have easily have drained it to the point where it gave you the described problems. Often with a battery that has been partially drained like this then it will rebound a bit after you've removed the load for a while, so this may well be what has happened.

 

I agree with uart. Your battery is good enough for now. Leaving the headlights on for an hour might run your battery down enough to cause this problem. After the lights are turned off, the battery could recover enough to get you started again.

There's one more place you can check for a loose connection: the jump point in the main fuse box. Some people remove the wire from the post when storing the car. If the wire was replaced and the nut just finger tightened....you get the picture. Be careful tightening this nut! You just want to get it snugged up so that vibration can't loosen it. Don't go at it like you're mounting a wheel.

 

Hmmm, thanks for your advice guys.

I will look for loose connections at the jump point too; I don't think anyone would have futzed with it to store the car (it was a government vehicle before I bought it, so I don't think it would have had unused seasons, and I haven't messed with it), but who knows what might have happened before I got it!

Otherwise, seeing as I can't recreate the problem, I'm not sure I can do anything except check my automobile club membership!

 

I would say you should replace the 12V battery now, given your no-start problem. The battery may have an intermittent shorted cell which did not manifest itself during your test.

It is better to replace the battery at a time and place of your choosing, rather than be stuck who knows where because of another no-start situation, having to pay premium prices for emergency service, and suffering the inconvenience of waiting around for help.

 

I have to agree with Patrick Wong on this one. I have been playing the waiting game on replacing our 12 volt battery. I have been checking the voltages as per the test that is recommended here on PC. My voltages have been averaging 12.2 to 12.3, 12.0 to 12.1, and 14.0

Since the weather has turned colder here I have noted the measurements have dropped down to 12.1, 11.8, and 14.1

This morning after having the Prius set for two days in freezing nights (light freeze) and 40ish days, when I went to start the Prius the voltage had dropped enough to sound the alarm and trigger the triangle with the exclamation point. Of course, I know that means that the voltage dropped below 11 momentarily when the load was applied.

To make a long story short, those of you like rabbitears will end up changing the 12 volt either at your choice of time, or it's choice of time. Unfortunately, if you let the battery decide when it is time you may find it is not the opportune time for you. Most weak/dying batteries give up the ghost when it is most inconvenient for you. It will be either real cold or real hot, and no matter how you look at it, it will be a major inconvenience and more than likely a loss of valuable time when you really don't have the time or money to deal with a emergency situation.

I have ordered my new battery and it will be replaced in the morning.

Ron

 

UPDATE: As I stated in my previous post, I ordered a new OEM battery from Champion Toyota here in Houston. I drove across town and picked it up utilizing the internet discount. With tax and everything the battery cost $183.67

The Part # for the battery (Gen2 with SKS) is 00544-21171-325 It comes with a 24 month full warranty, and is also prorated for 60 months after that. The battery is identical to the original battery. Same pencil posts, same size, same vent tube location. It is a true drop in battery. The battery is being manufactured stateside by Interstate and is branded as "Toyota True Start".

I then drove back home and proceeded to change out the battery. I found it was a simple and straight forward job. It was a little more tricky than most batteries due to all the stuff that has be moved, disconnected and so forth to do the swap. The hardest thing for me was the top bolt that holds the air duct for the traction battery. Other than that, it was a pretty simple job. I used two wrenches, two 3/8" drive sockets, some extensions for the sockets, one flat blade screw driver, and a small hammer. The wrenches and sockets were both 10 mm and 12 mm.

For those that have never done the job, if you are mechanically inclined you should have little to no problems doing the job. IIRC, a lady recently posted on this board talking about how easy the job was. FWIW, three different Toyota dealers quoted me prices for the R&R on the battery. The lowest was $50.00 and the highest was $275.00 I figure I saved myself at least a hundred dollars doing the job myself and I have the satisfaction of knowing that the job was not done hap hazardly.

Also, I checked the standing voltage of the battery before I purchased it. With my digital meter, it measured 13.0 volts. The old battery was giving me 12.4 and less. I am also seeing a lot higher numbers when I run the test now, so I know I am where I need to be. I will check the numbers in the morning, but I do expect to see at least 12.6, 12.3 and 14.0

Send me a message if you have any questions about the install. I can go into more detail if you need it.

I hope this info helps everyone.

Ron

 

Thanks for providing info about the new battery being stocked by Toyota dealers. The battery warranty that you described is better than what was previously provided by dealer parts depts.

Was the price $170 prior to sales tax?

Did you take any photos of the new battery? If so, pls post.

 

Patrick,

The price on the battery was $168.68 plus sales tax. I did not photograph it, but it looked pretty much identical to the battery I removed. The only real difference was the "True Start" Logo. All the other labels/number's were identical except the word YUASA was gone.

The price I got was what Jake @ Champion worked up for me.

I mentioned to Jake that the internet price is $152.27. I am looking at it as I type this post.

2009 TOYOTA PRIUS Parts - Champion ToyotaWorld

Jake said that there is a error on the website, and the price he sold it to me for was the correct internet discount price. Go Figure. Anyway, I am very pleased with my choice and I have no doubt about the entire process as well as the end result.

The only thing I did not do was to "save the presets". No big deal to me as I knew what every thing was set at before I pulled the plug so to speak. I do have a jump start pack, but did not want to drag it out and hook it up just to save a few button pushes after I powered back up.

First and foremost I have to say "Thank you" to everyone here on PC. If I was not a member here, I would have not tried to do what I have done. I got to this point in time by studying and gleaning information from the community!

Ron