2005 - Dying Accessory Battery... wait a minute... huh?

• P3000 means the hybrid control ECU heard from the hybrid vehicle (HV) battery ECU that it has a problem.
• C1259 means the skid control ECU heard from the hybrid vehicle (HV) battery ECU that it has a problem.
• C1310 means the skid control ECU heard from the hybrid vehicle (HV) battery ECU that it has a problem. It prohibits Enhanced VSC operation and a part of ECB control by the fail-safe function.

• B1421 is a binary switch (i.e. indicates on/off) and is not a problem unless you read this code in bright sunlight. Its normal function is to tell you that it sees bright sunlight or not, and if that lines up with what happened, there is nothing wrong.

The DTC to focus on is:

• P3014 means battery block 4 becomes weak.

Followed by:

• B1271 means the combination meter (CM) switched off or did not power on. There is a thread about that here.

I hope that helps.

 

That's not how this fault goes. It will progressively get worse until it fails completely.

 

Don't use a trickle charger. I tried that one winter, and by spring, the battery was completely destroyed.

Use a battery maintainer instead.

 

This guy does not want help and knows that a branch that stabbed his dashboard is the heart of the issue.

Capacitors take milliseconds to charge or discharge unless they are totally bad or disconnected, but he knows that I am sure.

 

What dolj is trying to say in post 22 is most of the codes in the photo are only there because of the P3000 and P3014. Those are the ones you need to focus on. Fix block 4 in the HV battery and the other 'associated' codes will clear. Your dash is no big deal, you've adapted and overcome it by logging fill-ups. Block 4 failing is going to make your life tougher the longer it goes, because the bad module is only going to continue getting worse.

Failing capacitors in the dash come and go for a while, especially when outdoor temperatures fluctuate. Go out on a cold morning and it may be dark. Drive home in the afternoon when it's warmer and it may be normal again. It's just age. It even happens in engine ecu's. The mid 80's-90's Ford F150 is famous for failing caps in the engine ecu causing the engine to not start. People have small businesses on ebay where they refurb them by installing new caps. Similarly, the only way to cure the 'dash going dark' problem is to install new capacitors. Otherwise, it just works when it wants and doesn't work the rest of the time, just like those darn F150s.

 

Careful on this. Don't create the impression you're hard to work with because most people are here to be part of the community and help each other. "Hard to work with" = many guys other than the one being responded to shifting to "I have other things to do with my time"

 

If the OP does get a replacement 12V battery I suggest finding an accurate scale, weighing the new battery, and keeping that value for future reference. Then if it starts having problems again in a couple of years it can be reweighed and this will indicate if it is drying out or not. In theory a battery which is drying out, even an AGM, can be restored somewhat by adding distilled water (and letting it diffuse into the mat for hours before charging it again). The problem though is that the OEM 12V I have has tamper proof caps over the wells, making servicing it even more difficult than on most other AGM batteries. (The caps have tilted spokes like on tamper proof screws, easy to screw in, very hard to screw out.) It looks like many other brands of AGM batteries for this car have adopted that design as well, for instance, the Walmart battery is like that.

 

You were given good advice on why it only lasted two years and how to avoid a repeat.

Apparently you missed it.

Because of this...

No. More likely it was a cheap mini vci interface.

Since you are risking someone else, your brake booster is being disabled causing poor brakes.

Famous last words.

Wow.

Double wow.

Fix your hv battery and your brake problem hopefully goes away. The Brake booster is highly suspect but masked by your marginal Techstream setup and missed advice.

One ER trip is way more costly than fixing this car or getting rid of it.

 

There are no codes that implicate the "brake booster"

That was not what was being said in my post that you quoted. The hybrid control and Enhanced VSC ECUs are merely acknowledging that they are aware that the battery ECU has a problem and will tailor their function to suit.

Sorry if my post was as clear as I believed it to be.