Master Warning Alert

Okay, a funny thing happened to me on the way home tonight. I was stopped waiting to make a left turn when my 2005 Prius with less than 5K miles on it shuddered and then a big red triangle appeared on the dash with an exclamation point in the middle... this was followed immediately by the highly descriptive "Problem" on the MFD with the icon on the upper left of the MFD showing a car with exclamation point in the middle. I'm pretty sure that the cold weather warning icon came on at the same time (although it reported 37F outside).

I pulled over as soon as I could (about 10 feet of travel) and powered the car all the way down. I waited a few miinutes and then powered up.

To my horror, the red triangle and highly descriptive "Problem" message were still there complete with the icon and the exclamation points. I thought the exclamation points were appropriate and descriptive but what the heck was going on I wondered.

To my further horror, the owners manual indicated that this particular icon meant that I should take the car into a Toyota *immediately*!!! Yikes!

To my even greater horror, this error seems to indicate an electrical problem with hybrid synergy drive. Oh no! A warp core breach!!

So, I drove the two miles home as carefully as I could under impulse power... (mostly downhill).

I powered down the car. Locked it. Opened it up again & powered up. Still the red triangle - RATS.

Checked the oil - a little dirty but ok (over filled of course). With the hood open I noticed a high pitch whine I hadn't heard before. It sounded electrical, like when an amp is powered or when the warp core is about to blow...

I powered the car down and went inside. Talked to my dealer who advised that I bring the car in while they set up a rental. I went out again about 30 min later to drive to the dealer only to find that the error message had vanished. No whines or abnormal sounds. I carefully drove around and immediately leaped on the rationalization that this was just a sensor glitch.

The batteries were at half which seemed odd so I decided to drive around a little to see if the error would come back. It didn't. Everything seems A-OK now and the battery charged to green (less one bar) pretty quickly. I called the dealer to let the tech know I wouldn't be coming in tonight but that instead we could add this to the regular maint scheduled this Sat. - he thought that I should come in anyway as even though the error went away he didn't want me to end up stranded. So I did and now I am wondering what happened.

I will keep the group informed and let you know whatever cimes up in the logs. Any advice is appreciated.

thanks!

 

thanks all - I will discuss with the tech and confirm that I have all the approp updates. My Prius was delivered in Nov04 so I guess that makes its build date pretty current but I will double check all of that in any case.

I'm having major problems with bluetooth voice quality in contrast to what other folks are experiencing so I'm wondering if this related to a general electrical problem. Are there TSBs for bluetooth bandwidth I wonder? Is there a master list of TSBs online somewhere?

 

ok - quick update. I just picked up my Prius from service and to everyone's surprise they found nothing at all in the logs! The Master Warning did not occur again either in their hands or in mine so far.

The tech had gone home for the night but I will check in when I can to see what he thought might have happened and see what they made of the whine (I'm sure they are stumped). This may be a glitch when event collide on whatever the Prisu uses as a system bus (i.e. I could swear that the low temp warning came on at exactly the same time as the master warning).

My bluetooth coice quality still is terrible though but I'm zeroing in on an Ericson that I can borrow for testing. I will read through all the lovely info on bluetooth as well (thanks!)

PS - I didn't check the oil yet but I bet it is overfilled