How about inverters?

I'm working on a different car today. It was hit in the front and has been in my garage for several years now. As I'm pulling off the broken/bent parts, I see that the inverter got pushed back a little, maybe a half inch, no more than an inch. The cross member pushed into it. Will that have likely broke something serious?

 

OK, so I know nothing about this and haven't ever messed with anything but injectors and throttle bodies on these engines. From looking at my bootleg service manual, it appears the inverter just mounts over the transaxle attached by three brackets with no hard connection to anything except those brackets. There are hoses and cables but nothing that would typically "break" except the brackets. And, yeah, the front two brackets crumpled from the impact, as I'm sure they're designed to do.

So that leaves the bracket in the back and, i think, under the inverter. The service manual doesn't say how to get to that bracket, and this one is obviously going to be bent. As I get a better look at everything, it's pushed back several inches.

That means I probably can't get my hand behind it from over the top. There's no room between the inverter and the cowl above or the firewall behind. I haven't gone back outside and tried yet, but that's why I stopped.

Wondering - that rear bracket looks like it has two bolt, one to the inverter and one to the transaxle - do I have to get to both of them? If I get one, can the bracket come out with it, or the inverter come out without the bracket? The service manual just says to remove both bolts.

I'm assuming that the rear bracket is bent like the front ones, so that when I get the inverter off, I can swap in all the brackets from my parts car and the inverter will sit fine again. Not sure how to get the back bolt in on the fluid reservoir - that got smashed in the wreck and I gotta swap it as well. Easy to take out because the reservoir broke off, but with the reservoir in the way, not sure how to get to it. Can I mount in on the inverter first, and them mount the whole assembly on the brackets?

 

Thanks, it's hot as heck here and the car is outside, so I'll go look some more when it gets in the shade. This morning, figuring that the only thing left holding it is the rear bracket, so maybe I could just bend it back out. So, I got a ratchet strap around it and was able to move it forward a couple of inches. I was attaching to the bumper frame at the other end, which exerted some downward pressure too, so not quite as much room underneath now. (the wreck pushed it back and up it appears)

I can see some of the orange cables in back, but can't tell it they are damaged. Here's a pic from my service manual, does it's illustrationn of the I bracket look right? If so, I won't be able to get to that from the bottom. Looks like I got to get behind it somehow.


It just shows single bolts everywhere, but I'm thinking that rear bracket has two bolts going into the inverter. You say they're only 6mm? That's pretty small.

 

Boy, that wasn't fun. I used two ratchet straps, one on each side of the inverter and pulled it forward enough to barely get to those bracket bolts using a combination of different 12mm wrenches. I've not disconnected the wiring yet to remove the inverter so that I can get the bracket out from under it. It was dark and I was beat.

 

OK, inverters out of both cars. Still tough to get one of the top bolts on that back bracket with those three cables in the way. And it's going to be tough to get those bolts started again. I need smaller hands.

The big orange connector on one of the two cables coming from the battery (I think, it plugs in at top rear driver's side of inverter) got smashed. Has anyone ever replaced those cables? The inverter side of the connector is broken too, but I'm hoping that I can swap in that piece off my parts car's inverter. Or maybe easier to just use that inverter

I lucked out on the body damage - I was able to bend the radiator support pieces back into place with hammer and pliers. I swapped in the crossover piece from my parts car but the side sections that surround the headlights were pretty mangled. It should all just bolt together now, and ready for some paint and a new HV battery. It only has a little over 140k miles and has a spotless interior. It'll be a nice car good for another 100k miles.

 

Well, nothing is easy. One of the connectors on my battery-to-inverter power cables got smashed in the wreck so I want to swap in the one from my parts car. SYK, my parts car is sitting on my open utility trailer in the storage yard, pushed up against the trailer's driver's side rail so I have enough room to squeeze into the passenger doors. I have other vehicles and trailers in front of it, so a big PITA to move it where I can get to it more easily, and I don't want to take it off the trailer because I'd have to push it back on to haul it away when I'm through. I've stripped it of everything I need except this power cable, and I got all the bolts out of the cable carrier except something holding it in at the firewall. Can't see it from above and can't get underneath.

So, I looked in the service manual and found this pic, but it doesn't help much.



The larger pic shows a nut that I've circled, but based on the rest of the manual and the rest of this pic, that doesn't tell you how many nuts there are. Elsewhere along the cable there are nuts/bolts spaced in pairs, one on each side, but the pic only shows one bolt for a size/torque reference.

Then, there's the inset pic of that section, which I've circled. That more closely resembles what I can see from above. I don't see any bolts/nuts. Just those small cubes on each side, where you'd expect bolts to be. I can't tell if those pop off to expose nuts underneath or if the bracket behind it comes off with the cables attached.

So, I'm going to look at my good car this morning. I can get under it and have a look see from the bottom.

 

OK, I found an EBay pic of a used cable and they removed the firewall bracket with the cable, so I'll go for that.

The service manual may have helped - it shows the inverter being removed with the back bracket still attached - you remove its bottom bolt into the transaxle and a second bolt attaching it in the back. Because my good car's inverter had been pushed back in the wreck, all the brackets were bent, and I only had access to the bolts holding the bracket to the inverter. I then just did the same with my parts car without even looking for access to the bottom bracket bolts.

Still, the second bracket bolt is on a separate piece of the bracket assembly that attaches to one of the bolts in the inverter. IIRC, it passes under the three thick cables, so that might entail some judicious wrangling to get all that out. The inverter already wants to catch on 3 or 4 other points in the engine compartment, especially coming forward into the radiator support crossmember. Leaving the brackets extends the inverter assembly length several more inches.

It's never easy.

 

I've still got to pull the hydraulic brake booster assembly off the parts car for use on one of my other Prii (separate, paused thread here). Never pulled one of those, but maybe easier with the inverter out of the way?

 

Well, you can easily get to everything from underneath, so I'm going to have to jack up the parts car on the trailer. What a PITA.

Those "cubes" on each side of the front upper cable are some clips I've never seen before. Instead of squeezing the tab in, the tabs actually swing out; they're locking tabs that click open and then easily lift off the bracket. Should have both cables off and the good one swapped to the good car today. Not that it takes all day, lol, just that it's hot as heck and there's only short windows of time when both cars are in shade or the sun goes down.

Then, I can start bolting it back together.

 

Kicked my butt again. Besides those cube clips, there were two last nuts halfway up the firewall. Couldn't see them without getting under the car, so gotta jack the parts car up. However, with those nuts off, there studs stick up so high that the cable carrier can't come off. I had to be a pry bar, but even that was no good because the entire cable carrier couldn't squeeze past those studs going either direction. WhyTH couldn't they have used bolts there instead of studs and nuts? Geezus.

I spend all my evening hours just getting the damaged one off my good car,and I wasn't able to do that without tearing up the cable carrier and pulling the three cables out individually. But, I can't tear up the one coming off the parts car, and I still need to get it on my good car.don't see any other way to do it, so I'm going to start by removing that section of the plastic carrier to begin with.

Geezus, once I got underneath and figured out those cube clips, this should have been a no-brainer simple job. Literally, those two little10mm studs that hold a 5 pound cable assembly turned it into a huge PITA. There's no excuse for that.

I expect that the engineers designed that upper plastic section to be left in place, just as I'm going to try to do going back. But it doesn't say anything about that in the service manual.

 

Wow, trying to swap in the good power cable from my parts car is a crazy PITA. I'm sure I've messed up somehow, but the only way I see it can be done is by pulling the cables out of the upper section of the plastic carrier and bending them around to come out from the bottom one cable at a time squeezed between the lower a-frame/crossmember and firewall above. The deal is, you have to do that while leaving that section of the carrier still attached to the car. Those two cube clips on the carrier won't squeeze through, so it has to come out from above.

And the carrier has super-tight plastic retainers all along its length holding the two halves of the carrier together, some are not accessible without pushing/pulling the carried up or down the few inches it'll move.

All that is after I used a hacksaw to cut off those two studs midway up the firewall. Made it easier to push/pull the carrier, but still wouldn't let the whole assembly come out.

This was my second try today - I pulled the damaged one from my good car and this is/was the good cables from the parts car. The first time I left the small bracket in place on the firewall that those cubes clip too, but it got in the way and I had to bend it to get the cables out. Today, I removed the bracket - that's worse. That made it harder to pull the cube clips off the bracket. I ended up bending it as well but did remove it entirely.

So, basically, I'm saying I've tried it all the different ways that I can see to remove the entire assembly in one piece - the way it's pictured in the service manual and the way I see used ones pictured on Ebay. I don't know how they did it. I don't see a way for the assembly to squeeze through the crossmember space, there's just not enough space. I could only get it through that space by breaking the carrier open and pulling the cables out, then wrestling to get the two parts of the carrier - one came out the bottom and the other came out above.

The only thing I didn't try was leaving the carrier bolted to the firewall, and the cubes clipped to the bracket, and breaking it open, probably all the way apart to pull the lower half out the bottom, then cutting the tape holding the cables into the top half of the carrier and pull them out the bottom, one at a time. IDK that it's possible to break the carrier in half with it still bolted to the firewall, not sure you can access all the retainers along each side of the carrier, but I don't see any other way to do it short of lowering that a-frame crossmember.

Only other possibility is that by jacking it up at the frame, I'm making that space so tight, but I don't think so..

 

I don't have much choice going back together - I've broken/bent up the top section both plastic carriers, and bent both brackets. In general, in my non-expert, desperate mindset, that whole plastic carrier thing looks over engineered - as least the part that goes up, that last section I keep braking. I'm thinking that it's not exposed to road debris like the middle section on the bottom of the car. The cables themselves are all in convolute.

I think I'm going to cut that top section of plastic carrier to create a smaller section that gets past the crossmember, but above that I'll just tape it all real good, and after bending the bracket bent back, just zip tie across that to hold them in place. It's only a few more inches to the inverter plugs from there.

 

Well, this is probably another case of Ron being a doofus. It's too late now, but as I'm looking at the service manual, it appears that the cowl below the windshield wiper mechanism can be removed. I didn't know that, lol. I've taken everything off above it and and even inspected it closely to see if it comes off and concluded that it didn't. But, now, I think it does.

Sure would have made this job a lot easier. I know it would have allowed me to get to those cube clips, and the bracket holding them to the firewall, which might have allowed the cable assembly to come out more easily. IDK, but my next task is to take the brake booster pump out of my parts car to swap into my other Prius, and I expect it will be easier for that job with the cowl off.

You think this is stupid, you should hear some of the bonehead things I've done to my Ford diesels.

Dang, this is a lousy service manual. I downloaded it from somewhere years ago. Appears the OP downloaded it from one of the online subscription services but he left out many pages and they're not in order.

Still, even if I had a good copy, it's assembly instructions are unclear and incomplete.