Battery dead after four days

fastest test for a stuck relay is an infa-red thermometer aimed at each relay, one that's higher is the circiut you looking for. It might only be 3-4 degrees highter but most will tell you which has the contacts close. If it's some thing else wrong but has the relay powered you don't even need the thermometer just feel the relay. But be advised that all the relays are not in the fuse box/ relay box that are under the hood. After 9 days with a new battery I can only assume that the draw is very small, just like the battery.

 

I think Toyota have a major problem supporting the Prius - apparently they take existing local mechanic staff and re-train them to handle the new electronics biassed technology in this car - very difficult.
I think that they need to provide separate, properly trained (not converted mechanics) electronics people, to support the existing staff - at least in the major centres.
If not, there is the danger of all their good work coming to nought , due to a perceived failure of local staff to efficiently handle any problems with the Prius.
There is nothing worse for customer relations if the service staff give the impression of "ignorance of the situation" when help is desperately required.
Once the bad news spreads generally, it is almost impossible to counteract - and, of course, competitors will take advantage .
A completely different method of thinking (to normal mechanic's methods) is necessary when troubleshooting mainly electronics problems, especially if computer and IT related.
Mechanics should handle all mechanical bits and technicians look after anything to do with electrons!
Toyota have obviously been unprepared for the overwhelming success of this car, as shown by their production predicament, and I think this also applies to how they support it service-wise at the various local dealers level!
Toyota probably should have even done a bit of over-kill here, to ensure all bases are covered!
It's a rapidly changing technology-biassed world and very hard to keep ahead of the game.


kenmac

 

in the larger metro areas I really don't think that there is a major problem, in the smaller markets there will always be problems keeping highly educated and competent Prius techs, they will always go where the money takes them, and it will always be the larger areas. In my area there are several really competent Prius techs. Where they go to is moneys best bet, but for the present they remain pretty stable as a group, spread equally among several dealers. This has been a problem from the time of the horse and buggy and will continue on. The Prius is just a new technology and there will be teething problems along the way. That said this battey problem has gone beyond the stupid to the dumb.

 

At most, the Prius is somewhat more complicated than the average new car. New cars have had OBD2 and other wonders for a few years now. Even the heavy trucking industry has sophisticated drive-by-wire, electronic fuel injection, even variable geometry turbochargers.

That said, a common complaint for ALL cars is when you do finally have a strange problem, perhaps software or electrical in nature, then the techs are almost clueless in how to solve the problem.

My background is Computer Science, with about 50% of my skillset in telecomms and 50% in industrial process control. I was first attracted to the industrial side due to the high pay and great benefits, where I almost immediately witnessed the problems caused by untrained or poorly trained techs.

Perhaps the worst example - or best example - was the tech incorrectly checking the current draw on a Foundation FieldBus segment, thus bringing down the entire segment. It's a good thing FF segments autorecover once the fault is removed.

On the telecomms side, "traditional" telephone installers were responsible, and may still be responsible, for a lot of the DSL field complaints. The older fellows would apply their traditional skillset and little shortcuts with disastrous results, especially with Spare Pairs juggling and not paying attention to the presence of loading coils or bridged taps.

And, of course, those older unionized fellows refused to listen to me when I tried to patiently explain why their technique would not work and would, indeed, cause a failure. After all, I had extensive training and was non-union, therefore I was to be avoided like the Clap.

After my one breakdown, my Prius has been trouble free, knock on wood. I think the large local dealership with a new, dedicated hybrid tech might have a lot to do with that. That tech has been VERY vocal to Toyota in his concerns and comments, and my hat off to him. I shudder to think what may have happened if my Red Triangle Of Doom had come on in BFE.

Overall, whatever industry you're talking about (Industry, telecomms, automotive, etc) has done a fairly poor job in training and selecting techs to resolve these problems. The scary thing is that most people learn to live with their unexplainable gremlins.

I'm sure we all know folks who purchased a Windows computer, had bizarre (Even for Windows) problems, and finally turned the box into a door stop or peddled it off in a yard sale.

 

I'll second Evan as I'd sure like to know what the "h" is causing it.

 

There have been problems with the amp not powering down correctly and that is why he ordered a new one for you.

My friend had a different phantom battery drain. Turned out that he was sitting in the passenger seat listening to books on tape during his lunch break with the car in ACC. mode. then he cycled the power to on and then to off. All okay except that he had the headlights on in the Auto mode. It doesn't shut off if you go out the passenger side - only the driver's door. Was his face red!

Something to think about...

 

As I posted above, the current industry (Industrial, heavy transportation, automotive, etc) has done an extremely poor job making sure the field support is kept ahead of their technology curve.

As more and more of these problems appear to be software in nature, don't even pretend that a typical high-school graduate mechanic can understand or attempt to fix the problem. What is he going to do? Perform a stack dump and a stack trace, look at every hex byte??

Please.

I suggest if you can invoke your state's Lemon Law, than DO IT. Get a new car and let Toyota ship it back to Japan and use tweezers to disassemble it.

You paid for the car, therefore you don't owe Toyota any favors. They owe you. If they can't fix the problem and you're stuck with an unreliable car, at the very least they should give you a new one.

Hopefully the new one will have current software loads, correctly patched updates, and will prove to be trouble free.

I must admit my local Toyota shop has been great in dealing with my breakdown. Their Prius tech has even asked me to give him CANbus lessons, so that's a very encouraging sign. I'll definitely keep going back to them.

 

A battery problem on the 12 volts can be due to only 3 things:

1 bad battery
2 bad charging system
3 excess load

In a Prius I should think you could pretty much count on the problem not being item 2. With the car running a charging problem should trigger a warning. Could happen without the warning, but would require some kind of double fault.

Item 1 and 3 could be hard to distinguish but one way is to pull the battery out for a few days and check it's charge level out of the car. Does it stay charged?

For 3 you can start pulling some fuses for things you can live without for a while, and see if this cures the discharge. If it does you can narrow down where the problem load is.

I would start with the car's built in diagnostics screen and plot a graph of 12 volt levels with engine off for a few days several times a day. Does the voltage stay up at 80% charge or better? There are charts all over the web to convert volts to charge level for agm batteries.

Here is one chart:
http://www.solarseller.com/battery_informa...rge_measurement

Remember to correct for temperature.

A slow drop while car sits could mean a load that should not be on.
A nice stable voltage and then sudden drops could be a cell shorting or some intermittent load problem that you might be able to relate to temperature, what you were doing with the car, etc.

 

Hi Geoff:

I can almost guarantee that if you show up at your dealership with a Maxim multiple channel AD convertor and IO logger, they will run away screaming.

Even in telecomms, most of the field techs will take a black box, say from Harris or Agilent, plug it in, and press a button. The screen gives them a PASS or FAIL, no details.

As a consultant, I often find it very difficult to communicate possible issues to field techs and especially to upper management. They just don't get it.

Almost without exception, the vast majority of software glitches I have encountered in industry (Telecomms, industrial process control, etc) have been the direct result of improper field updating or improper diagnostics. I don't try to directly blame the field tech, as they receive their training and orders from their supervisor and training department.

Once again, the entire industry has done a very poor job in educating the service personnel to properly perform field diagnostics and patching. In many cases, improper diagnostics and patching can make a bad problem much worse.

I wouldn't even deal with it Geoff. Invoke the Lemon Law and get a new one, it's not worth the bulls*** or your time at this point.

 

To get to diagnostics to check the battery:

1 press "power" without the brake so you get to accessory mode.

2 press and hold the "info" button while turning on and off the parking lights 3 times. You should see the display go to the diagnostics. Releas the button.

3 press "menu"

4 press "dislpay check" on the sub-menu

5 press "vehicle signal check"
Your battery voltage should be displayed. For comparison mine reads 12.2 volts at about 40 degrees

If you have driven recently you may need the headlights on a bit to bring the voltage down to normal. Overnight it should read ok without doing this. Take charge level readings with lig hehts off.

6 With lights on my voltage drops to 11.8 volts. (hid lights)

7 next power up to ingnition on or all accessory mode (no need for brake
here but you can use it if you want to drive. Either way the inverter starts and the voltage on my car goes to 14.2 volts

8 I think you can continue monitoring but havn't tried that yet. To reset display hold "display" for 3 seconds or so and you are back to regular mode. Turning power off also will get you out of diagnostics


Only flaw in this is my battery reads a bit low, and works fine! This is likely due to the loading of the accessory position. So a volt meter would still be best. But your battery problems are so bad that something should show up here.

 

First, Ig-On (amber mode, pressing power twice without pressing brake) does NOT start the inverter, nor the converter. There is no power coming from HV battery in this mode. Only READY mode connects the battery to the inverter. However, the HV Battery is activated in IG-On mode, and is integrated with the battery, so it can report on the battery's condition based on voltage and temperature.

Second, the diagnostic display would be no better than a voltmeter, and if left on, will eventually drain the battery since you have to at least be in ACC mode to display it. It not do any recording.
However, if a voltmeter was not readily available, this would be an adequate substitute.

By the way, when the battery appears dead, can you at least get into ACC mode, or do you not even get that?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DanMan32\";p=\"59440)</div>

Thanks for the correction. This also means there is no real substitute for a true voltmeter measuring at the battery. Perhaps the relay is bad that connects the battery to the inverter and it never actually charges the battery but the computer may only know the inverter works and not that the battery charges or fails to charge. This changes the possible problems list I had above!

Meanwhile, I just went to Radio Shack and got a Coleman rechargeable battery for emergency start up! I think it has enough power but till my battery goes dead I won't know for sure. I see no specs on it! It is small and I can keep it in the center console bin, plugged into the power outlet there. To use it I wll have to jumper the relay for the other ? outlet so it is always powered. Then I can just move the plug over to use it.

Anyway it was on sale at 29.95. I don't see it listed on the R/S web site but found it here listed:

http://shop.store.yahoo.com/kitchenhome/co...lcarbat2in.html

It has enough lights on it so you can easily tell when it needs to be charged, and if it is being charged!

Since it is supposed to start a regular car after 20 minutes of battery charge, I think it should work easily and quckly for a Prius.

If already covered here sorry, the search seems broken today as well as the "posts since last visit" web features.