2007 Inverter Replacement Questions

Hello everyone... About 7 miles from home on the freeway on Saturday something electrical started burning real bad... I was coming home from wrapping up this work here: $5,000 battery replacement quote from dealer.... | PriusChat

Then, on Sunday burning smell wasn't a problem until I got on the freeway and then the electrical burning was real bad and unlike a small wire that fries and is done, it was a lot of material that was burning. Then on Monday I took a sick day for my car and removed most of the dash and also vent cover in engine compartment. The only place I could smell the fried electronics was on far left driver dash board behind the wires and white plastic but no smell at all anywhere else not even engine compartment.

Anyways, long story short, it goes into limp mode 2 miles down the road this morning after dash lights up and I get POA7A & P0A94 and then after I get to a place to park it and shut it down and clear codes It won't start and I get P3004.

So I'm going to start with replacing inverter... But car-part.com points out that I have to know if my vehicle was built before or after May 1st 2007 and not only have I been unable to determine month of manufacture, but all my repair friends have never heard of this difference? What say you?

 

Oops, that was a typo... Just fixed it. Thanks for pointing that out.

 

Thank you for taking the time to reply... I've rebuilt the original pack / most of corrosion issues addressed and no bad modules yet. Also did reconditioning and fairly certain ECU isn't vulnerable to shorting out from corrosion from corroded voltage sensing wires.

The trans axle on the other hand... That would be super bad news...

Are you aware of any instances where a bad transaxle can burn up an inverter at freeway speeds? The symptoms of electrical burning smell began at freeway speeds and could only be replicated at freeway speeds the next day. Then the day after that it failed at first moment of hard accelerating away from a stop light 2 miles into a morning drive.

And lastly, I love cleaning/detailing so when I got the inverter apart I'm going to be doing lots of that... And I'm wondering of any minor mods / replace parts I could make in the engine compartment while it's torn apart? The inverter cooling pump recall was done in Fall 2013, but the pump they put in is noisy and fairly certain it's not because of air in the system. Would you replace that too?

 

Thanks Patrick... I had a similar discussion in my local Prius repair group and ordered a pump online, which gives me more time to give the car a good cleaning and testing, perhaps some other maintenance too?

Not sure I can find someone with a milliohm meter precise enough to test the transaxle, but will read up on it and see if I can find a primitive way to do it. I guess I could see what the transmission fluid smells like?

My guess is I'll be limited in testing transaxle and likely just have to install the inverter and hope there's nothing wrong with transaxle that will damage the replacement inverter.

I'm very please with the grade "A" inverter I got from the wrecker today... Was able to use my connection with my battery builder friend's business to get it wholesale for $75. Excited to take it apart and see what it looks like in there as well as track down the exact location of the failure in the old one.

The amount of burning in the old one was extreme, not flames or anything, but definitely got to the point that I was certain this wasn't a simple shorted wire and there was plenty of mass in the electrical burning for it to keep burning. The smell was the worst... New cabin air filter came today, so that will help, but interior still smells.

Once I make some progress I'll post an update and maybe lots of photos because there's not too many I've come across on here related to this work.

 

Well...

Thanks for pointing this out... Our local group discussed that a bit. The sense was any failure inside the transaxle is going to be inside a closed system and burning smells can't escape in significant amounts into the cabin in really strong ways, yet only at freeway speeds, but yes, replacing an inverter may be the least of my worries if that were the case.

If you have any thoughts on how to test for this type of failure without having access to expensive equipment, I want to know asap.