Location of fuse links

The orange high voltage cable?

Do you have 12v to chassis at the engine compartment jump point?

If it was not the orange cables, trace the power starting at the fuse box.

 

Specificity will be helpful here.

Which wires touched? Did they touch each other, or something else, or both? (There are a bunch of wires to the "inverter".)

How did they come to touch?

How long did the touching last?

What state or states (off, acc, ig on, ready) might the car have been in while the wires were in contact?

 

If you shorted wire 1F that connects the inverter 12v to the 12v battery, your 125amp fusible link buried inside the engine fuse box is blown.

With a flashlight at an angle you can see the link


You can also check for 12v downstream of the 125a link. One location is the 30A Eng WP (Engine Water Pump) fuse

 

The 125a fusible link is inside the engine fuse box. See pic above.

 

Use a flashlight

 

I will assume your short was 12v from the inverter to the fuse box. The 125a fuse connects that point to the white battery cable.

In post 2 the diagram shows another 140a fuse link at the battery in the 12v terminal. Check it as well. A voltmeter check before tearing it apart would have quickly isolated the problem.

Part number in pic of new part. The fuse box comes apart in sections but not easily. Verify the 125a using a meter first.



See "12v Test Point" in pic below.



With the fuse box out it might be easier to use the meter in ohms mode between the two points. Continuity (0-2 ohms) would suggest the 125a is good.

If use of a meter is new to you find help.

 

You say you hadn't disconnected the 12V battery, but you don't say whether the car was off, acc, ig on, or ready at the time.

It's hard for me to imagine you doing a job like this with the car anything but off, right?

Of all for states the car can be in, only in READY do those orange cables have any power on them. It's hard for me to imagine you'd start taking those off with the car in READY, right?

Moreover, to disconnect those cables, you have to remove cover panels from the inverter that have safety interlocks to keep the car from going READY.

It's customary to also pull the orange service plug at the traction battery before working on those cables at all. That plug also has an interlock to keep the car from going READY, not to mention it also brute-force interrupts the high-voltage circuit.

So if you had followed the usual customs, there'd be about five reasons for those cables not to have any power. Even if you skipped a couple steps, there were still probably two or three reasons those cables didn't have any power. So I am pretty comfortable saying those orange cables briefly touching wasn't the cause of any trouble you have now.

But I'm intrigued by what you call "the hybrid noise" you say you heard. Can you describe that noise some?



If you really had touched those orange cables together with them having power, from some freak failure of all five reasons they wouldn't, it would have been spectacular. For you to post about it on PriusChat afterward would be amazing luck.