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12v battery adventure, warning lights

Discussion in 'Gen 2 Prius Care, Maintenance and Troubleshooting' started by rajasika, Aug 13, 2011.

  1. rajasika

    rajasika New Member

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    2006 Prius
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    Hello all,

    2006 prius. Yesterday gave a jump to a friend with a motorcycle. After I got back in the car, no electricity whatsoever. Jumped my prius using another car, started fine and drove home, no warning lights. Same thing though after turning the car off, no electricity at all, can't start it.

    Eventually figured out that I had blown the 120A fuse, so replaced it and the car starts fine now. But... I get the triangle with the exclamation point, and the car with the exclamation point on the mfd. Any ideas what might be causing this? Battery reads 12.5v with car off. I find it a little strange that I didn't get any warning lights when I jump started it, but do now that it starts from its own 12v battery.
     
    #1 rajasika, Aug 13, 2011
  2. Patrick Wong

    Patrick Wong DIY Enthusiast

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    1. The big question is what did you do to blow the 120A MAIN fuse. Most likely you allowed the battery cables to be incorrectly connected - i.e., reversed the polarity.

    2. Since the MAIN fuse was blown, no power was available to the various ECUs, hence no DTC was stored in ECU memory. Once you replaced the fuse, the ECUs regained the ability to store DTC which causes the warning lights to appear.

    3. The 100A DC/DC fusible link may be blown and/or the DC/DC converter within the inverter may have been damaged. When the Prius is READY, you can check the health of both by measuring voltage across the 12V battery, which should be ~13.8V. This shows the DC/DC converter is working and that the DC/DC link is sound.

    If you do not find an obvious problem, I suggest that you will need to have the DTC retrieved, probably by your local Toyota dealer unless you have an alternative means to read the DTC. A generic OBD-II code reader may not be able to retrieve the codes.
     
    #2 Patrick Wong, Aug 13, 2011
  3. rajasika

    rajasika New Member

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    Patrick,

    Thanks for your input. Unfortunately I wasn't present when the motorcycle was jump started (wife and friend of ours did it, I didn't hear about it until I got a call saying the car was dead). Wife knows enough not to reverse polarity, but I suppose someone could have made a mistake. I really don't know.

    I checked all the fusible links I could find and didn't find any of them blown except the 120A near the battery itself which I replaced. Is the 100A fuse under the hood? All of those looked ok.

    I will measure the voltage with the prius in 'ready' and see what I get.

    I definitely don't have any way to read DTC...


     
    #3 rajasika, Aug 13, 2011
  4. rajasika

    rajasika New Member

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    Location:
    Indiana
    Vehicle:
    2006 Prius
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    N/A
    I checked the voltage, it was 14.2V. However the warning signals no longer display. I guess it just needed some time?

    The only strange thing that is happening now is that the sks isn't working, I have to actually insert the key to start the car. Going to check the manual and see if there is anything I need to do to re-enable it.

    I will check back in if anything else seems to be amiss.

    Thanks again for you help.

     
    #4 rajasika, Aug 13, 2011
  5. Patrick Wong

    Patrick Wong DIY Enthusiast

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    2015 Prius
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    Two
    Glad to hear that your car was restored to proper operation. Check the buttons below and to the left of the steering column to see whether the Smart system was deactivated. One is labeled SMART or KEY or something similar to that. The other would be for the tire pressure monitoring system.

    For future reference, the 100A DC/DC fusible link is located within a 5" long white/clear plastic box, which is in the main relay/fuse box next to the inverter, behind the driver's side headlight assembly.
     
    #5 Patrick Wong, Aug 13, 2011
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