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Brake failure

Discussion in 'Gen 3 Prius Care, Maintenance & Troubleshooting' started by Starfleet, Apr 12, 2018.

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  1. Starfleet

    Starfleet New Member

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    Hi all,

    My first time here!

    I want to see if anyone else has had a similar issue - I was driving on the motorway when these lights lit up, exactly the same as in this post
    When I went to test the brakes, to my horror, there was no braking power at all! Thank goodness traffic wasn't that heavy and I managed to get home whilst going slower...and using pure inertia and friction to stop at the junction exit. Pressing the pedal right down to the floor released whatever little braking the car did have.

    Called the AA man who could not find the problem - but noticed that the brake fluid level was low so there was a leak somewhere but yet all the brake discs were dry.
    They took it to the Toyota dealership who have now said it was a battery issue...
    My question is how does the battery have anything to do with the physical brakes? From posts here and the one quoted above it seems that there is a connection?

    Suffice to say that this is a scary experience, especially when at speed...but sadly it is not the first time it has happened as last year, the brake calliper broke and I experienced the loss of braking power once again...this time the entire dash lit up with a constant beep sound (none this time round). That time I dragged to a stop on the hard shoulder to get towed up and the AA man who showed up said it should never have fallen off like that and blamed the dealer at the last service, who blamed someone else tampering....

    Time for a Suzuki...?
     
  2. tankyuong

    tankyuong Senior Member

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    you bought a bad battery
     
  3. Robert Holt

    Robert Holt Senior Member

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    Did the emergency brake also not work?
    Did you find the leak?
     
  4. Mendel Leisk

    Mendel Leisk Senior Member

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    Any more detail, how did it break? And was this front or rear?

    How many miles on the car?

    Has the dealership serviced the brakes in past?
     
  5. rabbit1985

    rabbit1985 Junior Member

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    So is this connected to the 12v battery or the hybrid battery? I recently had to pull the hybrid pack on mine to replace a cell and have been having some braking issues since then that are pretty much the same. 12v battery is from sometime in 2019.
     
  6. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    Do your braking issues include any warning lights on the dash?

    If so, please tell us what the trouble codes are. You can get those by using a jumper wire and counting light blinks if you do not have a code scanner. They will tell us things.

    Without details, there's no knowing even whether your issue is like the one the poster in this thread had three years ago.