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Dreaded "checky hybrid system" issues, need advice

Discussion in 'Gen 3 Prius Care, Maintenance & Troubleshooting' started by PaulMarshall, Jun 13, 2022.

  1. PaulMarshall

    PaulMarshall Junior Member

    Joined:
    Mar 4, 2015
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    Location:
    Paducah KY
    Vehicle:
    2004 Prius
    Model:
    N/A
    So I've had issues for a while now with my 2010 Prius trim 5.

    It popped a "check hybrid system" code last year.

    I have a guy who rebuilds batteries and they seem to do very well He put one in my 2nd gen and it made it over 50k miles zero issues... till someone hit me and totaled car.

    I called my battery guy first. He came out, brought his techstream laptop.. poked at it for about 30 minutes Iran voltage graphs, floored it and let it idle etc... to put stress on battery.

    He said "it's not your battery, I could charge you, put one in and you'd be no better off... it is NOT your battery" He suggested it might be the EGR valve.

    So I take it to Toyota... the first thing they say is it's the battery, quote me 3000 something bucks and say that it when your ready we will book a service date.

    So now I go down a lonely road where I'm not sure what to do next... spending 3k at Toyota not an option.

    I ordered a brand EGR valve off eBay from a Toyota dealer in CA and replaced it. It looked a bit funky but that didn't fix it.

    I also bought an "exhaust leak detector" and checked the head gasket... as I've read they are very prone to failing on 2010's. Luckily my results were no head gasket issues.

    I've also read that carbon deposits in intake can cause the "check hybrid system" warning.

    Prior to all of this I had a coil going bad and was having a misfire on cylinder #2. I tore down everything and replaced all plugs and coil packs.

    I feel like I'm just throwing darts with a blindfold on.

    I put together my own laptop with Techstream on it and I have yet to be able to get the lights to pop while I am connected and recording the graph of all battery cells. It'll run for an hour or more (more than max recording time of Techstream data recording) and then pop. Just my luck I'll be busy driving and not get another graph recording when it finally does throw "check hybrid system" light.

    I hooked up my laptop before resetting it from the last time the lights came on after resetting everything and these are the stored codes in system.

    Can anyone please suggest my next course of action? I've thought about driving it to Atlanta to the 3rd party hybrid repair shop there. I've heard good reviews of them.

    I'd rather take it to St Louis as it's closer to where I live but haven't been able to find a shop that specializes in hybrids there.

    sorry for the long post... I'm just at a loss and could use advice. Screenshot_20220613-120509_Gallery2.jpg
     
  2. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

    Joined:
    Mar 30, 2008
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    Location:
    Indiana, USA
    Vehicle:
    2010 Prius
    Model:
    IV
    That's exactly how it is before having the trouble codes.

    Now that you have a screenshot of the trouble codes, there's a P0A80 there. That's the traction battery.
     
  3. PriusCamper

    PriusCamper Senior Member

    Joined:
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    Location:
    Pacific Northwest, USA
    Vehicle:
    2007 Prius
    Model:
    Two
    Toyota Stealerships look at "check hybrid battery" as automatic response to customer that they need to replace it, they won't even look into confirming it's not some other easy to fix issue with it until after they get your $3K and its still broken.

    If you have a warranty or a way to work out a deal with the battery rebuilder to swap the pack, that'd be the best place to start because EGR valve and other engine problems create different error codes rather than battery error codes. It's likely when the rebuilder looked at it the battery wasn't misbehaving.

    If I were you I'd buy one of these devices https://www.ebay.com/itm/265484403768 and use Dr. Prius App on your phone to screenshot and clear codes as you drive. Sometimes you need to keep clearing battery codes for a while before you get clear on which modules in the battery are bad. And if you keep texting those screenshots to your battery rebuilder every time you clear error codes, he'll come around and admit its the battery eventually.
     
  4. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

    Joined:
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    Location:
    boston
    Vehicle:
    2012 Prius Plug-in
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    Plug-in Base
    your battery guy got no codes on tech stream?