My Prius just quit running

Hi up...,

You need to provide the DTC codes for anybody on here to help you.

First thing to do in your area, in that vintage car is to clean the throttle body.

The Powertrain, minus Hybrid system has a 60 month, 60000 mile waranty. The hybrid system has a 100000 mile waranty. It will probably be fixed under waranty, unless you dropped a 1 on that 31 K miles (131K miles?).

The main thing to worry about is that you did not take the battery down so low, that its either damaged, or needs to be recharged for the car to use it. Its generally not a good idea to use battery as a backup unless your only going a few hundred yards, and/or manuevering to a safe stoping point. IE, emergency usage only.

 

It sounds like fuel is just not reaching the engine in the necessary amounts to fire the engine.

When my MkI Prius ran out of gas, it would throw up EVERY warning and error it possibly could, and the behavior was just as you describe: it would start, run for about 20 seconds to one minute, then kill; repeating the process would buy me more time.

Since you have a full tank of gas, I would suppose either your gauge is wrong and there is no fuel, or you aren't getting enough fuel to the engine. I bet it's a simple fix: cleaning something out.

~ dan ~

 

they need to tell you what codes they have so far. otherwise we're all making shots in the dark.

 

Since you don't have access to the codes, I will stick my neck out and guess that the root cause is an inverter coolant pump failure. This caused the DC to DC converter in the inverter to overheat and voltage on the 12V bus to sag. This caused the power steering to fail (resulting in the heavy steering effort you noticed).

When you restarted, the 12V battery was marginal so it could not keep voltage on the 12V bus at a reasonable level. This resulted in the SRS system registering a fault (the warning light with the man & the red balloon.) I'm surprised that you didn't see brake and VSC warning lights also come on.

An inspection will confirm whether or not the inverter coolant pump indeed has failed (if working you can hear it sound like an aquarium pump - located near the driver's headlamp, and you can see fluid turbulence in the inverter coolant reservoir.) If so, then once this pump and the 12V battery are replaced, your car should be back to normal.

 

I've experianced this around 43k miles. My pump still works though.

the dealership wanted to charge me way too much $$$ to look at it. I walked away, check over everything myself, and decided the car was still ok.

I'll have to take another listen to make sure she's still kicking. I did average extremely low (29mpg) on a long distance trip recently. The traction battery was low and warm. (i wish i had a scanguage)

 

the codes, if you can post them, will tell the whole story.

if you did not lose braking power (or hear the brake power-loss warning buzzer that sounds when the backup power is used) and were able to start the car again, then there was at least sufficient 12v power to run those things.

 

I wonder if you just got a real bad load of gas. Water could plug up the fuel filter and cause the car to run out of gas.

 

That's what I'm thinking - something happened at that fill up. 60 miles is probably something like 20 miles in a "normal" car.

 

Yeah except, if it's the out-of-gas issue like I had, the codes won't appear on the computer if it gets resolved by refueling or replacing the fuel.

When mine did it, like I said everything lit up; after I got it to the gas station (by restarting it like five times), refueled, and restarted it was no longer displaying the errors -- the dealer then said no codes had been stored.

If they wind up just flushing his gasoline (maybe there was some accidental adulterant like soylent green in the main tank below wherever he filled up last).

~ dan ~

 

Thanks for your update. I would not have suspected the mass airflow sensor given the symptoms previously reported.

 

If it's so dusty that you have enough junk sitting on the filter that it falls down into the mass airflow meter then he's right, you are waiting way too long between filter changes.

I'm glad for you that it was something relatively benign.

A couple of thoughts:
Is much dust getting into the cabin? If so, you probably should be cleaning the cabin filter frequently. There was a thread recently about getting a lot of dog hair into the ventilation for the traction battery--the comparitively easier troubleshooting and then the clean up set him back over $700. The poster made his own filter for the ventilation duct so that it wouldn't happen again. You might want to consider doing the same to avoid potential headaches down the road. You could make a habit of checking or changing all three filters on roughly the same frequency.

One other thing to keep in mind is that in dusty conditions it is probably best not to extend the oil changes like some of us might with synthetic and non-dusty conditions. There will be some amount of fine dust getting past the filter and finding its way into your oil. In that case doing more frequent oil & filter changes and using cheaper dino oil probably makes more sense.

 

[cranky unhelpful post deleted]

 

As a group PC is awsome!
This is post 2 on this thread, not after 3 hours of shop time.

 

As a group, I think we have debated for *years* what causes the MAF and TB to clog or act up, and need cleaning. The most popular theory was oil overfill, and a search will uncover numerous threads about this topic

However, my FJ Cruiser has been slowly "acting up" over the summer. By "acting up" I mean the fuel economy has gone down about 2 mpg, sometimes it will idle roughly at red lights, and sometimes it will need 6-7 cranks before it starts. Also noticed a rotten egg smell backing into the garage

I was away a lot on business, but did manage to put around 7,000 miles on my FJ since May. My elderly father has been ill so I ended up driving him a total of 7 times down to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. You would think all that highway driving would have helped the FJ

Note: my Prius is too low for his hip to be comfortable with . He'd much rather climb up into my FJ

I figured it was time to change the plugs anyway, but also decided to go ahead and clean the MAF sensor. The various FJ Cruiser forums hinted the MAF needed cleaning to resolve this issue

The MAF is similar in design to the Prius one, except it's easier to get to. There is a product from CRC called SensorKleen - in Canada - or CRC Mass AIr Flow Cleaner

CRC Industries Global Home

I was pretty surprised to find the MAF just *filthy* with a grayish/blackish deposit. I tried taking photos but I don't have a camera capable of zooming into the innards of the MAF. I have attached a pdf of the exterior of the MAF, the bulb is the temp sensor. You can see the before/after difference

Note: I assembled the pdf with Adobe Acrobat Pro 9. You will need Adobe Reader 9 to properly open the document

With the MAF cleaned, instant difference in how my FJ runs. No more rough idle, no more rotten egg smell, much better response. It will probably take me 2-3 weeks to burn enough gas in it to see if the fuel economy has gone up

What I'm now wondering is if the PCV system is allowing oil vapors to slowly build up on the MAF. Although I couldn't get a photo of the two hot wire things inside the sensor, trust me, they were coated with what looked like ash

A common thing to both my Prius and my FJ is: use of a PCV system, operation in a winter climate of down to -40, with resultant heavy PCV vapor buildup. This is grabbing at straws, but I change the oil in both vehicles myself, and oil overfill just can't be the cause

You could damage the MAF by doing that. Please use the proper cleaner, as indicated above.

 

I should note that when my FJ started displaying the symptoms, there was no CEL

 

d'oh. it's really easy to knock crap into the maf when you change your air filter. in your driving scenario, you apparently need to be more careful than most to not let anything fall in there since your air filter gets so dirty and you have to change so often.