Accelerator stopped working - mechanic estimate $$$$$$$$

the car and i were towed to Avi on Thursday. The tow was $100 total, about half what i thought.
it was a shorter route than expected, more surface streets.

Avi could not get any codes on the car, none showed. This was either because the previous mechanic deleted them and they were not showing up or because inexplicably when i brought the car home Tuesday, the overhead light was left on. it had to be jumped when it was towed.

So because there were no codes showing up and the car showed no symptoms and it was driving fine, it couldn't be diagnosed or fixed. Despite that, it was more valuable hearing what Avi thought about it than having a useless diagnostic eval that i seemingly had on Monday, he basically said i might as well drive home and wait and see when it will show the problem again.

There never have been any orange triangles. When the accelerator stopped fully working, there was a beep, which was a sign of caution or something.

i talked to him about the steering problem or whatever it is since i ran over the road hazard and replaced my tires, end of March, and no one i've taken it to knows what it is or thinks it's anything important, or can fix it. Avi drove my car a lot while i was there. For the steering issue he wanted it to have an alignment to rule out a need for that, given that people vary in their ability to align wheels correctly, and there was a tire place there, there was no charge to me for any of this, though he said if that fixed the problem then i could pay for the alignment.

It still continued feeling weird, the ride and the drive, i can feel it as a passenger. He said he's willing to figure it out and to fix it. for now, i need to see if the accelerator problem comes up again in the near future, but i was greatly uplifted with having my reported car problem experiences taken seriously.

Avi said he has Yokohama tires on his car like mine but an older version of them. He looked at my tires and said they're made in the Philippines. He said previously they have been made in the US, he says his are fine. He said some newer tires made by michelin, yokohama and others are now being made with thinner side walls and this gives them a squishy feel at first. maybe it's that. When the problem first started i was going to just put tires i knew to be good on, to get that problem solved, but Yokohama and the tire shop said it looked more like something was wrong with the car, nad yokohama said to take it to mechanics for diagnosis and repair, and if that didn't work, to call him back. The tire shop guy felt sure it was a leaking shock. No one i've taken it to has considered the shock needing replacement.

Avi said if i want, he could take the wheels off his car and put them on mine, to see if i still have the problem. That is SO COOL. i will do that. i needed to get back home on Thursday but something new happened today that i want to call him about.

The car drove home yesterday, no problems, not a short drive. plenty of traffic. Friday i wanted to make a short trip to the store and i wondered if it would have 'the problem' (accelerator). When i turned on the ignition. The tire pressure warning light was flashing.

i took it to the place where i got the tires and asked him to check the pressures on all of them. He said they were all low (33 psi he said). He put them up to 36. The light continued to flash. He said the car had to adjust to the temperature which required a little driving. I drove it for about 3 minutes, light continued flashing, i brought it back, he checked the sensors. He said the right rear sensor was dead or off, he showed me a picture on his computer thing with 3 green sensors and 1 red. He said it was related to the codes being deleted from the other mechanic. He said that could cause this kind of thing. i didn't understand his explanation, not knowing anything about sensors and codes, but he said that deleting the codes could cause things like the flashing tire pressure light, he said as the codes come back, it can cause more of this kind of thing, he said "that's how it starts."

i don't know what this means. I need to make a pretty long freeway drive today, in a few minutes. i don't know what's wrong with my car. i will try calling Avi later to see what he thinks/knows about this.

After seeing Avi, i have a mechanic. I greatly appreciate people who told me about him. It's the opposite end of the spectrum of worst mechanic, and all around person. It isn't that things can always be fixed or that cost will never be painful but just feeling like priorities are ethical and all about figuring out what can be figured out. That doesn't grow on trees.

 

bisco
Can anyone test my 12V battery health? Just to to an open mechanic? or......? Oh, you mean like when AutoClub came to my house to charge my dead battery and they tested it and gave me a little print out with percentages of things on them, like a cash register receipt? i still have those, but it's been a while since that was done--months? i'll dig those up. Thats something anyone can do, like a gas station that has service?

what's the monitor battery, in relation to the flashing tpms light?

Thank you for clarifying about how much driving is needed. i plan now to drive at least a short distance every day, no problem. i just didn't know. i am sorry to say, when the car had about 60K, beginning when the carpool lane stickers for hybrids in CA expired on July 1, 2011, i got a natural gas Civiv with carpool lane stickers and really barely drove the Prius, it mostly sat in the garage from that time until 2013 when i retired from high mile driving job, went back to Prius, sold Civic 2009 which was a really nice car, i hated natural gas because fill stations were few and far between, that didn't work for me. the gas burned up fast. i don't know what toll all that sitting had on the Prius.

 

Thanks. What kind of labor is involved in installing one of those? Does it have to be put up on a rack?

 

Thanks -
so, i just got the new set of tires March 30, yokohamas. I am going to work with Avi on that, he is going to put his wheels with older yokohamas on my car and i can drive it and see if the problem is fixed and if it's fixed, then im going to get some Goodyear Assurance Triple treads and replace the tires with new ones and the sensor can get fixed then, hopefully. If the car is still having the problem, figure out how to get it fixed.

if the tire has to be opened up to replace the sensor, then does that require getting a new tire (if you already have new tires)?