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VSC ABS ! With No Codes

Discussion in 'Gen 2 Prius Care, Maintenance and Troubleshooting' started by pauly99, Mar 13, 2021.

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  1. pauly99

    pauly99 Junior Member

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    A couple of months ago and very sporadically, the traction control light would come on and go off on my 2009 Prius with 174K miles. This would be followed by the VSC ABS and ! lights. These lights would stay on and not flash. Within 30 seconds to a few minutes the lights would be off and all would be good. The car road the same. The traction control light started to light up more frequently (and immediately turn off) which was always followed by the VSC ABS and ! lights staying on for longer periods of time. I could do the OBDI trick with the pin to get the lights to turn off. Brakes functioned normally and I'm still getting 51mpg on the car. I attempted to pull codes using Torque Pro and Dr. Prius but nothing. Most recently the VSC ABS and ! lights have been on continuously. Again... no codes ever. If I attempt to clear codes there is nothing that clears and the lights remain on. My tires have about 60K on them and are going to be replaced tomorrow. Attached is a video of the lights flashing after I put in the pins this afternoon. The lights remained on after removing the pins. I don't know if anyone can derive what the flashes mean?

     
  2. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    Yes, anyone can. :) You just focus on one light at a time, and count.

    Your ((!)) light (which cognoscenti call the "ECB light", electronically controlled braking) is blinking "36".

    Your ABS light is blinking "33".

    Your VSC light is blinking "43".

    Your tire pressure light is blinking "24".

    Then you turn to the Repair Manual (more info), and you find that the tire pressure code "24" is equivalent to code C2124 that a scan tool would read, and means the tire pressure receiver isn't getting a signal from the transmitter that was registered in slot 4. (That doesn't tell you right away which tire that transmitter is in, unless you have kept track of that, but if you watch your tire pressures with a scan tool and you let a little air temporarily out of one tire at a time, you'll figure out which one isn't reading. It's an old car, battery in that transmitter could be shot.)

    You find for the ABS "33" it's equivalent to C0210 on a scan tool, and means the brake computer is getting a wonky wheel speed signal from the right rear. That could be the wheel speed sensor itself, or something in the wiring back to that sensor, etc. All the computer can tell is the signal is weird, so a human needs to figure out why. There are five pages in the manual for that code with tests you can make to pin down where the fault is and how to fix it.

    The "36" on the ECB light and the "43" on the VSC light were left out of the Gen 2 manual (early editions, anyway), but that got fixed for Gen 3, which explains that "36" on ECB and "43" on VSC both mean "never mind me, go look at your ABS code."
     
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  3. pauly99

    pauly99 Junior Member

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    Chapman, Apologies you did the work for me. No one likes to see codes on their car but I am taking this as good news. A few months ago I took my car into the local tire shop because the right rear was losing pressure (over the prior few months) at a rate of maybe 2lbs per week. They never found any issues, said I had about a year left of tread on the tires which even though I had driven 9,000 miles over the past year and a year ago I was told the same thing. Anyway, the tires are 5 years old and have about 60K on them so they will be replaced (by another shop) today. I'm going to mention the issue I was having to the shop and see if a TPMS might need to be replaced.

    I think one thing may lead to another with the right rear. If it can't be found today then I will take some of this on my own. I like to DIY but at the same time I really haven't done anything more than change oil over the past 5 years... I did the front brakes. So if it costs a few dollars to keep my car running I am more than happy with that. I really appreciate your help. In normal circumstances I would have at least gone to Autozone to have codes pulled but at least for the next few months I am trying to be very safe.
     
  4. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    It's very often good news. It's almost always better news than having some pre-OBD car flake out and not have any codes to explain it.

    We have a little bit of a catastrophizing problem on PriusChat, where despite the fact that there are several hundred trouble codes programmed in and most of them are for fairly minor things, as soon as you post that you've seen warning lights, usually you'll get several responses telling you it's probably one of the two or three most expensive issues anybody can think of.

    So far (finding some wood to knock on), all of the codes that have ever come up on my car have been for things that were no sweat to fix. The key is just to keep calm, read them, look them up in the manual, deal with them.

    That's the nice thing about the code blink method. As long as you can find a little wire, you can read those codes on your own, wherever you are.

    A downside is that not all of the computers in the car play the blinkenlights game. Some can only have their codes read with a scan tool. And even for the ones that do give blink codes, a proper Prius-capable scan tool will be able to give you more detailed information than just the blink codes. But that probably won't be the scanner they have at Autozone anyway. (It's not uncommon here for people to scrounge an elderly Windows laptop and put Techstream on it.) Short of doing that, the blink code method does pretty well, for the brake/skid system anyway. It can be more reliable than using some random code scanner that might not successfully retrieve the codes; cuts out the middleman.
     
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  5. pauly99

    pauly99 Junior Member

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    Well unfortunately none of the TPMS were bad. Was actually hoping for that. On the bright side I have new tires on the car.
    Good to hear about the Autozone scanner. I do have an old mini vci cord that was good for Windows 7/8 along with an old laptop so I may have to find a way to get Techstream working with that.
     
  6. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    Do you still have the C2124 though? A little hard to reconcile that with none of the transmitters being bad. But could be a receiver antenna or wire harness issue. There are six pages in the Repair Manual of ways to check and pin down the cause.
     
  7. pauly99

    pauly99 Junior Member

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    Just recorded it again and there was no change whatsoever. Yes. Still getting the 24 on the tire pressure light. Can't imagine hitting the set button under the steering wheel would do anything... haven't done that as of yet.
     
    #7 pauly99, Mar 14, 2021
    Last edited: Mar 14, 2021
  8. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    The SET button's only function is to tell the TPMS to remember the current tire pressures as being the pressures you like to maintain.

    Unless you change your mind about what pressures you like to maintain, there is never a reason to press it.
     
  9. pauly99

    pauly99 Junior Member

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    Understood. Thank you.
     
  10. pauly99

    pauly99 Junior Member

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    Well I was able to pull some data. Not much showed up through Techstream which was surprising to me but I do have an idea of what to check now.

    upload_2021-3-15_18-8-38.png
     
  11. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    The important thing is to visit the Repair Manual (more info) to find the methodical steps you can use to work from those codes to what has actually caused them. The "fortune cookie" that Techstream shows next to the code is generally not enough information to do that.
     
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  12. pauly99

    pauly99 Junior Member

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    Just want to follow up. I cleared codes and they would come right back.
    In the end it was the right rear wheel bearing that was causing the issue.
    This is what my hub looked like. A switch out and the dash lights went out.

    A separate issue of a crunching noise was helped with new sway bar links.
    Added some new tires and I have a happy car right now.

    [​IMG]
     
  13. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    Little Nevr-Dull would've cleaned that right up. :)
     
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