Hybrid battery / 12V battery issues / warranty decision

Hi all. This is my first post (and sorry it's so long!). I bought a 2003 just shy of a year ago and have landed here many times for info, but haven't needed to post because the car's been mostly fine. And this post is a little premature, but I have a decision to make.

- The car: purchased with about 162K and now at about 178K. The 12V was an Optima Yellow top that went in in June 2017. For reasons explained below, I just replaced that, so it's now new. The hybrid battery was a Dorman (unfortunately) installed in Sept 2016, and is still under warranty until Sept of this year (2019). (I paid $2600 for the car and only went for it b/c the hybrid batt was replaced and still had a year's worth of warranty. This is part of the question).

- This discussion will be hampered by the fact that I ordered a MiniVCI long ago but haven't yet gotten it to work. There's another thread below that I am likely to tack onto to seek advice there.

- I know how important it is to give as much info as possible, but if I said it all no one would read the book. And it will be a book anyway.

- About a month ago it started throwing the red triangle, though driving normally. I do have a generic OBDII scanner (laptop based) that gave me a P3006. I'd clear the codes and all would be well for a little while and then it would come back. (The "little while" got shorter and shorter until it was like 2 minutes.) Twice (out of about a dozen times) the Main Batt light also went at which point the car did as expected with loss of power and racing ICE. Once I pulled a P3026 with the P3006. (I do know what these mean, but know the limits of just blindly trusting codes). Every time I cleared codes (or disconnected 12V) it would go back to driving normally.
- My initial attention went to the 12V because I knew it was ailing, and finally did figure out that regardless of static charge it couldn't handle load. So I just bought a new one, tossed it in and crossed my fingers.
- Ping - 2 minutes to red triangle. I can't get my d!&@ MiniVCI working so the next morning had it towed to a local independent that specializes in Prius.
- They *did not* find a P3006 (that I'd been getting for like a month), but instead a P3000 - sub 123. The DSOC was 20%, SOC 52%, battery blocks 18 & 19 read 15.76V while the range on the rest was 16.16V-16.41V. They diagnosed bad hybrid battery unit. (Handwritten was "More than 0.3 difference between battery blocks").
- I drove it back home from the shop (~15mi. / 20-25 min) with the red triangle, but without incident. I did *not* pull either P3006 or P3000. In fact my generic scanner said no codes, but with a mysterious reference to having freeze frame for a P3009. Moving target.
- I got in touch with Dorman tech support (online chat), fed them the info and they approved a warranty replacement.
- I called the supplier and they have a "new" Dorman refurb unit en route to their location.
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So where things get funny is that I don't want any car just sitting so I'd still put it in Ready once in a while and/or take it on short trips (so long as the Main Batt light didn't go wonky). It's been about a week now. Run time has been several hours (sometimes just Ready mode), and driving has been over 100 miles. No triangles, no codes. It's all just "normal." So I have an inkling that all of this just came from accumulated junk in the "hard code" ECU storage (rather than KAM) caused by the bad 12V. Had I just started out by replacing it and all the codes slowly went away I would easily chalk it up to that and I wouldn't be here torturing you with this book. Nor would I have started a warranty claim.

My difficulty lands at this. I can get another "new" reburb Dorman HV battery - it's on the way. But the stories of immediate to short term failures of these units are not hard to find. So I almost think I'm better off sticking with the one that's been in there functioning for (almost) 3 years. It's the devil I know. And I think it's a gamble either way. (I would also not be shy about pulling it out and working on it).

Anyway, this is where my lack of a functioning MiniVCI becomes a problem. I'm working on it. And if it's not up shortly it will go back to the shop for a fresh read of the HV batt. In the meantime, I'm going to have to make this decision within the next week or two - take the warranty replacement? Or leave well enough alone?

Sorry the post is so long.

 

Yeah. That's probably about right. Thanks. I'll update as soon as I get new numbers out in terms of the battery system. (As far as I'm concerned, I should just be able to pull this info up right on the screen of the car...)

 

Thanks for asking. And I'm just full of "long stories". The only old junker laptops I have around to use for this right now are Win 7 64bit. (I'm on the hunt for an XP 32bit).

But I don't think I'm having the "normal" problems that people have with the 64bit. I followed all of the instructions that came with the cable to install in 64bit - several times - including with a few hard drive wipes in between just to be sure. At this point I've followed like 4 different sets of "instructions."

I never had trouble with with the drivers. The cable installs fine - first coming up in Device Manager as a non-working device. I then install the drivers as per instructions (whether the ones that came with it or others on the web), and the cable seems to be fine. The ports / USB to serial converter and VIM are there with no errors. I do the registry mods (at one point manually on my own). I run the "firmware.exe" file and it tells me the thing is connected. Techstream installs with no errors and starts with no errors.

I hook it all to the OBDII port in the car. I get no errors. I tell Techstream to connect and it "pretends" to. But doesn't come up with the car info automatically - but I get no error message. So I plug in the car info. And it "pretends" to connect. I end up "pretend connected" and ask for a "Health Check" and it checks....and checks....and checks....and checks... and then all of the ECUs come up as "not supported" or "not responding." (White box with the *). But I don't get any error messages.

I think the cable is FUBAR, but all the seller would offer is to remotely hack my laptop from China (via "teamviewer"), likely because he thinks I'm a dumba** having driver problems. I told him that hacking me wasn't an option.

Like I said, I've followed multiple instructions even wiping the hard drive in between and get the same result every time. The last attempt was just that my version was 12. something and I found an older 8. something version and tried that. Same result. It doesn't matter what I do. I get the same.

No matter. Latest update on my problem: after over a week and a few hundred miles it started coding again (I got the P3006 again via my generic OBDII scanner). The hybrid battery came out this evening and is on its way to be swapped out in the morning.

In another post recently I was feeling cranky about this and referred to having one of these as owning a house of cards in a stiff breeze. This is why I was feeling punchy. This is basically unreliable stuff and unstable stuff. But frankly - as many of you probably suspect - the issue is likely Dorman's rather than Toyota's...

 

My biggest gripe is just that I should have access to diagnostics through the car interface.

As for age. I have a '97 Ranger work truck with about 230K on it. And a '97 Escort with over 400K on the body. Easy stuff. Easy to diagnose and easy to fix. And both "greener" than a Prius. The greenest car you can have is the one you don't throw away. The biggest question about whether you throw it away or not is whether or not you can figure out what's wrong.

When I bought the Prius I was just looking for an econobox of some kind, and with the "new-ish" battery, I went for it. But I should have remembered that this is one of my favorite pieces of writing:
Why I am NOT Going to Buy a Computer - Wendell Berry

Simple is better.

 

This is a really long overdue update. I work 2 jobs, have 2 kids yada yada. The amount of time I have to hang out on the web is ... low.

But I hate "hanging" threads where someone posts a question, it goes unresolved, and .... ... ... ... a resolution is never posted.

I can only assume that I have the resolution. I did get the battery swapped out under warranty, replaced it, and it's now been almost 3 mos and about 4,000 miles and I have had no further issues.

Why did the HV battery slowly descend into constant coding out constantly, suddenly stop coding out at all, and then go back to coding out? I don't know. But it did. So my initial question remains unanswered. But changing the HV battery has resolved it for now.

And while I was fighting the problem of getting the Tech 2 up (which I still don't have!), I wish someone had said - "Hey, look into the Dr. Prius app!" It would have been awesome to have it. Now I do.