Stump the Chump, Gen 3 edition

Right of course, the one I posted was a plan view (usually I find those in the Toyota manuals to be quite faithful) and the one you posted was a schematic, which can be simplified from the real physical layout.

But I think you may have nailed it. I figured if I could look up a part number for the filter, I could at least google for images of it and see if it looked like something different or not. So by skimming part numbers on ToyoDIY, I found a likely-looking part number 77746-47010 and looked for images ... that does look like the animal, all right.

If you needed one, you could get it for $40 new from an online dealer, or $50 used on eBay, or $115 from TLS Auto Recycling.

The way Stump the Chump used to be played 'round here, that puts RRxing up next to post a photo or diagram of some obscure Prius component....

-Chap

 

Whaddaya know? I made a comment about the unclear drawing through the feedback form in techinfo before my days ran out, and just now got an e-mail from Toyota about it.

I guess that's a nice thing about online manuals: if they improve the drawing, everybody using the manuals online gets the improved version right away.

-Chap

 

It seems RRxing has not supplied a new Gen 3 chump-stumper, so here is another puzzle (if it hasn't been done on PriusChat before):

What is this item? And where, in a IV or a V, would it be found?

You may think this is a drawing of a thing, but no, it's the actual thing, scanned at 600 dpi.



-Chap

 

Nope, not a fuse. It is an electrical component though.

-Chap

 

I scanned in grayscale just to keep the size down, but only because that's pretty accurate. It would not look much different scanned in color.

The shift pattern for a model VI is out because I only said it's on a IV or a V. Plus if they had ever introduced a VI later in the cycle, they probably would have spelled it Six.

You might be able to find it in some Fours or Fives, but not all of them.

I mentioned scanning it at 600 dpi. The image is just 424 x 332, so this is a thing hardly more than 3/4" by 1/2" in size.

It is closer to the front than to the back of the car, so not a window defogger element. I'll go ahead and say not a mirror defogger either.

-Chap

 

Another hint: you're seeing a spiky pattern darkly and clearly because it is on the near surface of what you're looking at. You're seeing a sort of chain-of-doughnuts pattern that is lighter and more ghostly because (I think) it's on the other surface of what you're looking at. That is a flat white slab of looks-like-some-kind-of-ceramic, but thin enough you can partially see through it to the pattern laid down on the other surface.

-Chap

 

It is located further back in the car than the MAF sensor. Inside the passenger compartment, in fact. Air does flow past it, however.

Every Prius would have a MAF sensor, not just a IV or V, right?

-Chap

 

Dingdingdingdingding!



The business-end shown in my first photo is up at the top in this photo, in the foam-lined area where it sits in the driver's-side face A/C duct and the air passes over it. The rest of it is a fully-potted (nothing to see inside) high-voltage AC supply for the electrodes in the first photo. The 12 volt power input is at the lower left.

I didn't take a photo showing the business end, but here's one from an eBay listing:



The two high-volt AC electrodes that can't directly discharge to each other because they are on opposite surfaces of a dielectric barrier (the ceramic sheet) makes it a surface dielectric barrier discharge plasma generator.

Ironically, the earliest use (and one of the biggest industrial uses) of SDBDs was to generate ozone for industrial processes. Ozone was exactly what Kazuo Nishikawa, the engineer for Sharp who developed this thing, did not want (ozone in confined space with people = bad), and he has written about the difficulty he had with tweaking the parameters like applied voltage and electrode structure until he got something that made the ions he wanted—H3O+(H2O)m and O2-(H2O)n according to this and this)—while avoiding the production of ozone.

Also interesting that, while Sharp developed and trademarked this thing, they don't make this part; Denso has licensed the technology to make their own, and they needed to register their own EPA Establishment number to do it, because the thing is regarded as a "pesticidal device" under EPA rules (where bacteria, viruses or other microorganisms can be considered pests as long as they are not "on or in" you at the time—I guess when they're on or in you, they're FDA's concern, not EPA's).

There seems to be a lot going on with this little thing. It clearly isn't just a negative-ion generator or half of an electrostatic precipitator, as some other threads have speculated, just to make your dust stick to your upholstery; there seem to be a number of papers on how the combination of particular ions it generates end up reducing the allergenicity of various common allergens.

Anyway, according to ZC1's original rules for the game, RRxing is now entitled to post the next photo of some interesting or obscure Prius thing, and see who can name what it's for and where it's found in the car (or somebody else can, if RRxing takes too long).

-Chap

 

Is there a new stumper? The first one in this thread was correctly guessed by RRxing in post 12, and the second one was correctly guessed (again by RRxing) in post 35.

I don't think anyone's posted a third one yet, though that kind of is the point of the thread.