Jump Start Problem

Welcome to PriusChat!!

How many miles on this vehicle?

Do you have any OBD2 codes (DTCs) that you can share with us here?

It sounds like you still have enough HV battery life left to turn over the engine, but then it shut down without actually 'starting' or firing up. Don't keep trying to start the vehicle, or you will risk running down the HV battery, and will have another issue to deal with. Best to locate a toyota hybrid compatible OBD2 code reader and post the results (DTCs) here for additional guidance.

 

pretty common story. usually becasue you jumped it directly to the 12 volt battery in the trunk instead of the front jump points that are designed to be...well...jump points.

here's what you do. Get an ohmmeter and pull every single fuse out of the fuse box under the hood and the fuse box in the left knee kick panel in the cabin. Check each fuse with ohmmeter.

• 2nd Gen Prius

At the very least least you will have a blown DOME fuse.

Then as SFO has mentioned if no start you need to get the cars codes read using a hybrid capable OBD code reader. Dr Prius is a phone app you will also need a Carista Bluetooth.

use the search forums tab up top search MINI VCI or DR PRIUS or TECHSTREAM and start reading about code readers that work with this car.

In your profile post where you live and the mileage on your car for the love of god please.

 

Another very recent long saga started the same way. Ended up getting sorted without too much expense. Different incidents might not have identical effects, but simple, patient, systematic checking and good observation tracked them down. Might be worthwhile to review that one to see how that looks.

Part of the trick was not to be too spooked by other posters saying it was certain something expensive was fried and it wasn't worth fixing. Well, sure, that could happen ... that's what doing the simple patient checking and observation will tell you. In that case, it was nothing of the sort.

 

Indeed, listen to ChapmanF

 

As I recall, I had a couple of blown fuses in the engine bay fuse box along with the fusible link. Can't recall which ones. If you don't have a multimeter, pull them out one by one, and always put the one back before pulling another ones. That's a good way of not mixing them up.

Take extra care when checking the fuses under the steering wheel. Because it's upside down, it's easy to put them back in the wrong way around. That caused a lot of my problems.

What happened to the aux battery then? You had to jumpstart it for a reason. Is it an old battery? Only asking because mine was an old one (4 years) and I had all kinds of warning lights come up while driving.

 

That is deader than dead and unless you can explain the reading by way of a loose connection that battery is the problem. You need to replace it.

If the battery is as you say, then you need to disconnect it before even trying to jump-start the car. If the battery has an internal short, it will only be exacerbating the situation.

 

If you followed the link to DMAndy's saga, you saw that part of what happened involved taking pictures of the under-dash fuse box using a phone camera—specifically the front-facing, selfie camera.

I remember it was kind of a surprise to me the day I first realized my phone was programmed to shoot mirror images when using the front camera. I guess they are built that way so we can see ourselves in the selfie the same way we look in a mirror, and we aren't weirded out seeing ourselves waving back with the wrong hand.

But that means if you have a selfie-camera picture of your fuse box, and you put the fuses back in it making the selfie picture look like the fuse box diagram, you can be in for some head-scratching moments trying to solve your electrical issues.

 

I can't speak to Android, but the iOS camera looks like a mirror while you compose the shot, but the actual photo is not reversed. It gets flipped back the right way.

 

I kind of thought that was how my Android phone worked, and to be honest, I haven't gone and grabbed it since DMAndy's thread to deliberately test it. But however he did it, he definitely ended up with a mirrored shot.

 

A fuse is just a wire made out of a material that melts at a certain temperature. Like any other wire, it doesn't care which end is which. Since it can't be put in backwards, it's not labeled or made to protect against putting it in backwards.

 

As Chapman F has suggested, I meant make sure you put them in the right order. As somebody else said, a fuse is just a piece of wire, there is no wrong way of putting it in, just the wrong slot.

I am sure you had the same two fuses blown as I did. Now that I think about it some more, one was the dome fuse, as I had no lights in the passenger compartment.

At those values, that batter IS deader than dead. Tell us more about how you're jumpstarting the car. You're not really jumpstarting the car in the traditional sense, you just need enough power to get the computers going, the hybrid battery does the rest.

 

Well, there are the two in the assembly that you connect the positive battery pole to.

I still don't get it. When you try to jump start the car now, the dashboard and multifunction display don't come on?

 

What’s etcs?


iPhone ?