Possible Gen3 Prius Transaxle Failure at 70,600 miles :(

Hats off to your Toyota dealer.. if only all of them were like that...
Congrats on the positive outcome! Would've been interesting to see the insides of that inverter and
what popped off that the fuse couldn't handle (if there is one?).

 

I hope Toyota is not using Chinese caps in those inverters.

If mine fails outside warranty, this would be my source: 2010 2011 10 11 Toyota Prius Hybrid DC Inverter Unit DCX | eBay

 

The inverter is made with Insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT). I doubt there is capacitor in there.

 

According to ORNL lab study, inverter/PCU casing holds a few, one in dc-dc converter and 3 others to the inverters.

 

Congrats on the very positive outcome GC........could've been a lot worse.

Hats off to ur Toyota dealer. I hope the rest are take.g notes

 

Nice one GC, any idea how much the inverter cost and what's the dealers name ?

 

Glad to hear you have your baby back!

 

Hi Grumpy - sorry to hear about your problem. I hope that you get it sorted, but I wouldn't hold out too much hope of sympathy and goodwill from Toyota. You may remember that I bought my TSpirit at about the same time as you and went through all the arguments with Toyota about the unfairness of the warranty to those of us who bought early. I don't remember all the nice details now, but they pointed out to me that a warranty extension was available (for a price) and that there had been a price increase around the same time as the change in the warranty. I suspect that the price alteration was more concerned with exchange rate changes, but it was a nice excuse.
In the end, I paid up and now have the 5 year long mileage warranty - it cost me about £600 I seem to recall.
I hope you have more success than I did in arguing the case.

 

IGBTs or no IGBTs, there are always other components in there. Resistors, filter caps, chokes, what have you.

The "Chinese" caps, in case you didn't get the joke, were due to a bunch of Taiwanese electrolytics made with a dodgy electrolye from China. Seems that this Chinese guy was working for a Japanese electrolytic capacitor manufacturer, stole the formula, and ran himself and his formula to China. He and a manufacturer made up a batch of this (very expensive) electrolyte and sold it in Taiwan, undercutting the original manufacturer's product.

All went well until it was discovered that this guy's formula was missing a critical ingredient, a stabilizer. As a result lots and lots of round aluminum electrolytic capacitors on a ridiculous number of PC mother boards began failing; I've actually got one of these (bulgy) caps on my desk, as a Warning to Vet Suppliers. All written up in the press, lots of fun. Not to worry, all the fuss happened back in 2001 and thereabouts.

KBeck

 

congrats on the outcome grump!

 

When you get a chance, if you could perhaps give some additional technical details about the incident:

• longitude+latitude of hill where problem occurred for Google Earth metrics
• temperature
• duration (or distance) and average speed before the crest of the hill

This can give enough information to replicate the driving profile of the incident but I have an OBD scanner and can instrument our test car . . . unless there is diagnosis of what failed beyond 'the inverter.'

Warranty repairs seldom give the failed part to the owner so I doubt if anyone over here will get their hands on it. IF we're lucky, it is on the way to Japan for a detailed analysis. But in the meanwhile, it would be interesting to see what happens when we try to replicate it.

Bob Wilson

 

Yup, knew about it. Had a TV and a few PC components with bad caps. It was the issue about 10 years ago and thought long gone.

I guess I missed the original joke. LOL.

 

I remember two other threads about inverter failures, I will try to find the threads tomorrow.

Glad you got it taken care of without a huge expense, that really was the right thing for Toyota to do.

Note to self: replace my inverter coolant at the next service. Hopefully this might help. OP, did you ever replace your inverter coolant?


iPhone ?

 

Thanks for the article. I'll have to take a look. I knew about dodgy capacitors plaguing many devices including certain mobos and affecting a whole bunch of certain Dell Optiplex models. At my former work, we had a bunch of machines develop the infamous bulging capacitor problem, including my manager's. His was a model known to have the problem (where Dell extended the mobo warranty for this issue) and his started having trouble. Sure enough, we looked and the caps were bulging.

While doing some digging, I was surprised to learn that Nichicon (supposedly a good Japanese maker of caps) had some issues that affected a bunch of companies:
Dell on the Nichicon Capacitor Issue - Direct2Dell - Direct2Dell - Dell Community
.

 

Grumpy, ask your local dealer about new Hybrid Service Programme (Europe only):
Toyota Hybrid Service Programme

I got a reply from Toyota Adria, that this hybrid check costs 25 €, I think it's well worth it, after your normal hybrid waranty expires.

 

This check-up qualify you to battery extra care programme, limited to 10 years from date of 1st registration. It looks the info about this extra warranty is not widely published across EU Toyota sites, so I asked for reply from our local Toyota's office.

 

Grumpy,

Do you have your inverter whine back as you brake? You mentioned early in this thread that you were noticing that it wasn't there (or softer than you remembered).