My Prius won't turn off — no, I mean it *REALLY* won't turn off

Thank you for the redirection, might be another one of those projects I'll undertake .... when time permits ...... and the urge not to sit down and do something like have a beer and watch TV :lol:

T1 Terry

 

I had the same problem at the very end of the combos life it would not shut the car off no matter how long I held the power button.


Rebuilt combo from Texas Matt and years later still good.

 

I have a 2004 Prius, and have had increasingly intermittent problems including the dashboard being blank, and the car not turning off, and the hatchback losing hydraulics. My display screen also intermittently & increasingly flashes and goes blank or flashes/cycles through all kinds of weird screens -- for a while, it was thinking/reporting it was a Lexus, hahahaha (I think there's a loose connection somewhere). So I can't use the screen to get any data or use the 'turn headlight on and off 3 times' trick to try to monitor things.

Anyway, by trial and error, I have found a way to turn off the engine that has worked 100% of the time for me when I have these issues, if I follow the steps exactly.

1) WHILE YOUR FOOT IS ON THE BRAKE, push and hold down the power button until you hear a click/change in the engine (usually about a long 5 count for me).
2) Release the power button AND take your foot off the brake.
3) Push the power button twice quickly.

If I didn't have my foot on the brake in step 1, it doesn't work. If I forgot to take my foot off the brake when I did step 3, it didn't work. Each time I 'messed up' the steps, I had to start over to get it to work. But this has worked 100% of the time for me when my Prius doesn't turn off normally.

Hope this helps someone else.

My question is: can I continue just using my old Prius with all these problems, or is it risky or is there inherently something bad I am doing to the car if I don't fix these problems? The car is old enough that my SO doesn't want to spend extra money on 'fixing' things.

 

sure, you won't hurt anything. can you tell how fast you're going?

 

Google maps now has your speed & the speed limit along with all the other info of the road on their map - so that can be your speedometer! But I'm not the fastest car on the road at any rate.

 

It will probably progress to that not working also then you will have to open the hatch and disconnect the 2 plugs from ther 12 volt battery.

Its the combo meter. Replace the combo meter. There's a good how to video on Youtube how to replace that meter.

Contact Matt @ Texas Hybrids they can sell you a new meter panel.

 

I had both my prii do this. both 2008.....both had the combo meters repaired by Texas Hybrids. They have never had that problem again.
that was 3 years ago.

 

Yep mine lasted a few years till I sold the car. They do a good job.