Jumping Prius Prime with Hulkman Alpha85

Bailing a leaky boat is something you've gotta do, but investing some time in finding the source of the leak is a good strategy as well. Specifically, put an ammeter in series between the negative battery post and ground. Then, when the car is shut down, closed up, fobs well away and undisturbed for say half an hour. See what what amount of milliamperes are flowing.

Normal is around 20~30. If it's significantly higher, start pulling fuses one-by-one, see if you can get it drop. That might help isolate the culprit.

Probably more effective than trying to get Toyota's attention. If you do find something, disclosing that to the dealership "might" wake them and Toyota up.

 

There's a lot of plastic in modern cars, so it's best to be prepared.
Why not just find any 24 inches of scrap wire and place screw terminals on each end. Even if you have some old lamp cord laying around, double or triple them up in the terminals. Bolt one end to a strut tower nut or fender screw. Make sure you've got a clean conductive surface. Once it's bolted down, use a DVM to ensure it's a good ground point, then spray with battery terminal sealer to preserve the connection.
Wrap-up you extended ground wire and tuck under the fender, till needed. As long as it doesn't touch an energized surface, your good.

Hope this helps.....

 

To be honest, with a jump pack, if you're young, getting to the battery isn't the worst.

But it would have been smart of Toyota to have made the very obvious boost points closer together for jumper packs. Then again, it's entirely possible that they put them super far apart to make it even more difficult to reverse the polarity with standard booster cables instead. In the grand scheme of things, I think reversing polarity when boosting from another car is *worse* than having to crawl in the back.

Alternatively, it would have been nice to have had a manual latch release for the electronic trunk release, similar to the manual release on the rear doors. That would also help a lot. Yeah you have to unlock the doors, but if the battery is low, not dead, unlocking the doors is often still possible.

 

There is a jump point under the hood, but apparently no close ground point. So you don't have to crawl into the back with jumper cable in tow....

 

Yes sorry, I meant that they were probably thinking "do we put a ground point close, or do we put it far so no one can screw it up?"

 

Post 22 is the way to go, if there really is nothing good nearby.

 

Post 22??

 

I'll cast my vote for post #16. The modern jump packs make it easy; why make it hard?

 

When I connect direct to both posts, I blow across the top of battery, though I suspect it’s akin to whistling past the graveyard.

 

In days of yore I carried around Safe-T-Plug jumper cables, which came apart in the middle. The plug and socket in the middle had LEDs that would light when each respective half was connected with correct polarity to the donor or recipient battery. When both LEDs were on you'd plug it together in the middle. No spark near either battery.

Simple, and clever for its day. These days many jump packs have those features built in, connecting with no spark and detecting backward connections.