Help! P0A90/239 and P341 = $7800 Dealer quote for transaxle

Hi Folks. Forgive the long post, but I wanted to give all the details. I love my Prius and expected to run it for at least another 30k miles, but maybe I can't.....

2004. ~141K miles. (Bought in December 2003. One of the first!)

Replaced the 12V battery in last November (second replacement). Replaced the air conditioner last summer.

The combination meter is shot, so no dashboard or warning lights. The touch screen and the hybrid battery charge level screen still work. It usually shows the battery is mostly charged, sometimes fully charged. All green bars.

Last week, going up a pretty steep hill, car started bucking and losing power. Battery level dropped quickly down to 1 purple bar. (Orange car with explanation point warning light on touch screen). Car lost all power. I had to roll it backwards (downhill) onto the shoulder. Luckily, no traffic.

Engine Wouldn’t start. Didn’t hear the battery cooling fan. But the radio and the phone charging jack worked.

About 45 minutes later when the tow truck was on the way, I tried to start it again. It started up. The battery had more juice then when it died (2 purple bars??) and I continued on my way up the hill.

Took it to the dealership to have it diagnosed:

Codes: P0A090/239 Drive motor “A” performance. HV Transaxle input malfunction (Shaft damage). Also P341 Camshaft Position.

Dealership apparently ignored the P341 and gave me a quote for $7800 for a new transaxle. (This is the Big Island, Hawaii. Things are expensive, but that’s preposterous.)

So I drove it around for another week with no problems while I started looking for a used transaxle. Same symptoms happened again 2 days ago. This time it restarted after about 10 minutes, I made it about 3 more blocks up the hill and into my driveway, but it seemed like it was starting to lose power again.

So thoughts? Can the P341 Camshaft Position error be causing the symptoms? Should I swap in a new one first, or does it sound like the transaxle is really failing? Any help would be greatly appreciated. I’m out of work and don’t really have any money for this repair or for a new car. I’m kind of in trouble here if I have to get this fixed……

Thanks for listening.
Xtina

 

Thanks. I've been there and seem to be having trouble navigating their blog and knowledge base. I get a "not found" response with the error code P0A90 when I try to search on it in the knowledge base. There's an entry about P0A92, but is that not a different code? The symptoms described in that article are nothing like what I've been experiencing. I wonder if you could cut and paste the address for the article you're referring to? Thanks again