1st time owner. Lots of codes. Please help!

It might be a good idea to ask Matt to report to this thread. Prius owners develop their own vocabulary to describe issues and you are still learning.
Perhaps a moderator like @Tideland Prius can tag a few other trusted members in your area. More trustworthy friends are always good.
This could be the start of another Prius meetup group. There are not many outside California.

 

The OP is @LadyLock .
THIS was Lady Luck from the Virginia Lottery (until she retired)

 

Great news!
Hopefully, through this ordeal you can make some new local friends too!

I hope you have made a few friends here too.

 

YES! LUCK BE A LADY TONIGHT!

So, now all of you are in a giving mood, and no place to give....

How about contributing to Kris' IPA FUND.

I can't have any for a few more months, but I know that once the doctor says O.K., I am going to have a powerful thirst!

Oh, and since MATT was so nice, I will drop a few cases off to him in Texas!



I will sent up an account in one of those Cayman Islands. I am sure Prodigy can help with that!
kris

 

I am definitely no financial whiz & the furthest I have been off-continent was a trip once to Haiti.
I am one of those who sees no redeeming qualities in alcohol consumption.

Children, on the other hand have the redeeming qualities of being our future, if they are raised properly.

I guess you need to find a less expensive thirst quencher. Your child may need you to sacrifice your IPA habit longer than a few more months

 

Ah, Prodigy...you are a spoil sport!

Alcohol Health Benefits: A Drink May Help You Live Longer | Time

But, since you do mean well, that's O.K. I am sure Bob Wilson and his El Patron will help me.

And, btw, I am really very glad that Matt was so great to get this sorted out!

Big, big hug to him!!

 

Hoooraaay! I like that outcome.

It's always good to breathe and check the possibilities. Probably the single most common first-post thread title for new PC members is some variation of "I've got the dreeeaaaded red triangle of deeeeaaaaaaatthhhh!"

And I always want to say, all right, go read some trouble codes, do a little diagnosis, then decide how dreeeaaded it really is. Sometimes it is. But it can always turn out to be something simple.

I wonder if it's worth a bit of followup with the original dealer (and any of those consumer-affairs journalists if they've been called in), just so everybody knows what it turned out to be. A serious mistake, sure, but not the scammy "we'll tell you the battery's good when it isn't, muwahahahaaa" kind, just the "oops, forgot that duct" kind.

)sigh( rough all over, isn't it. Who can stop out to Oregon and make sure Kris exists and really needs the IPA?

-Chap

 

I'd be happy to contribute some of 903 Brewery's St Patrick's Day special Friday Slide stout in celebration.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

Well, I don't really need it....if it were between a new bike and some IPA....

 

That is beyond GREAT NEWS!

One reason why a person should NEVER EVER rely solely on "codes" (DTCs, trouble lights, codes whatever) to diagnose ANYTHING. It is in some cases the complete wrong path, this is one example. All that could be determined from the fact that codes were stored was that there was *something* going wrong with the HV system. Turned out, that everything in the HV system was working perfectly!

Glad you got it resolved and had a new HV battery to boot!

 

Good outcome, but got the moral of the story backwards.

Don't forget that in this case, the code read from the HV ECU (saying *something* was reported by the battery ECU) was never followed up by a chat with the battery ECU—as recommended in posts #13, #16, and #19.

In particular, post #13 was an excerpt from the repair manual thanks to @Erik Owens. Step 1 of that procedure was to read the battery ECU to get the original codes. Step 2 of that procedure was to do an active test of the battery cooling fan.

It would still have taken some actual hands-on investigation to find out why the system was concerned about the cooling fan (because, really, the fan itself was ok, but the cooling wasn't happening because of the duct), but the investigation could have gone very quickly in the right direction by not ignoring the information put right in front of us by the onboard diagnostics.

-Chap

 

Some of us guessed that. We have a few locksmiths here.
The misnaming had just reminded me of that good fairy with bad luck I mentioned earlier who promoted the state lottery for many years.

 

It is GREAT to see a lady in the "trades", not common at all, but more common every day and a good thing!

 

Ah. Yes. That brings up another point that's worth repeating here (really, as much for future readers who might come by this thread, as for present company).

(By the way, are you sure it was P0A83 and not P0A82 ? I'm not signed in to techinfo right now, I'm looking at an internet-snagged copy for a 2006, where the "Cooling Fan 1 Performance or Stuck Off" code is P0A82. I suppose it's possible they changed it between '06 and '08.)

But anyway, for that code, "Cooling Fan Performance or Stuck Off" is just what we've started calling the "fortune cookie" for the code. It's the one-liner that's short enough to be built into a lot of scan tools, etc., and pops right up with the code, and should be enough to sort of remind you what the code's about, but it's not especially useful for troubleshooting.

What you want for troubleshooting will be on the same page of the repair manual as the main page for that code (with the fortune cookie up at the top). It's a little further down the page and it's called the "Detection Condition". That tells you what the computer in the car actually has to detect for it to show that code. In this case, it says:

And when you think about it, that makes perfect sense, right? The computer can't really tell you whether your fan is stuck. It's bolted down inside a box and it can't see the fan. It knows what speed it's commanding the fan to run, and it knows what the battery temperature is, and it knows for the speed it commanded vs. the temperature it's seeing, something doesn't make sense. That's the best it can do. It's up to the human to go find out why.

The troubleshooting instructions on the very next page of the manual say "Check the ducts and the blower listed below for disconnection and damage. Also, check that they are not clogged up with foreign substances. (1) Quarter vent duct (2) No. 2 quarter vent duct (3) No. 2 quarter vent duct inner (4) Ventilator inner duct (5) Battery blower". (Accompanied by a diagram showing all the duct pieces and where they go.)

So, not to detract from Matt's awesomeness at all, you can see that what made him awesome is that he (a) didn't ignore the information the car was giving him, and (b) went and checked out exactly what the manual tells you to check out for that condition. And that is awesome, considering it's something a lot of the rest of us on PriusChat could also suggest if we weren't so busy spitballing random unrelated dire possibilities.

I like to think of those diagnostic codes like the "Fair Witnesses" in Stranger in a Strange Land. A Fair Witness was somebody professionally obligated and trained to only say exactly what they actually can: if you ask one "what color is that house?" you'll get something like "it appears white on this side." (If you then take them around the other side, they might say yes, looks like the same color the first side was at the time I looked.)

That's what the DTC "detection condition" is: the computer just telling you, Fair Witness style, exactly what it detected: "For the fan speed I requested, the temperature was not what I expected."

The fortune cookies for the code are more like the kind of stuff the rest of us non-Fair-Witness types always wish we could goad Fair Witnesses into saying: "All right, enough of your Fair Witness nonsense! Out with it! You mean the fan's stuck, right? Don't you?! Just say it!"

... and the Fair Witness just looks at you patiently and repeats "well ... for the fan speed I requested, the temperature was not what I expected."

Have you gotten back to them with that? They might actually appreciate knowing what it turned out to be (either in case it was one of their techs who left the duct off, or if they just want to know some problems can be really simple when they're trying to resell cars that show some issue).

Hmm ... maybe you should let us call you that more often.

-Chap

 

Without doing this to death, as Chap has covered it well, just wanted to comment on these two statements.

It did not turn out that the HV system was working perfectly fine. There was a critical piece of ducting missing, that led to higher than expected temperatures in the HV battery. That is a pretty significant failure of the HV system.

The one code we were given, P3000, indicated there were other codes that would lead to a more focused diagnosis. The additional one Matt pull directed him straight there.

I'd say pretty good call for the "Fair Witness" system.

Yes, a good result and I'm also so pleased that LadyLock got a good result. I hope you get a few more things going your way in the future. Kia kaha (stay strong) LadyLock.

 

@LadyLock, I'm so glad everything worked out so well for you! I'm always happy to help.

We ought to meet up sometime, we're both in the area.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.