Newbie 2002 Prius

Ok so I took the plunge. Well I sorta just screwed up but anyway. I have been researching and learning all I can about prius's and found one on craigslist that was dead (first mistake I know) I went and looked at it and barring some rust in the rear fenders it looked good. So the story told to me was that the owner was driving this car daily and came home one night and turned off the car and when she tried to start it in the morning nothing was happening. They basically diagnosed this down to a bad ignition switch not a broken shaft but a bad switch. She talked about having a friend bring one over and hooking it up they were able to get it to turn on but not start. Sounded to me like a key immobilizer issue so I bought it. When I went to pick it up I asked how long it had been sitting and she said 3 months. Ok so that is the car as I bought it. I got it home and started to investigate further. It for sure had a very dead less than 1 volt 12 volt battery. I look on here and went and got one of those and put it in as well as replaced the ignition switch and things seemed to come to life ha ha. Well not so fast. On the very first power up the system show main battery issues on the LCD and the Red triangle of death was front and center ha ha. So went and got my obdII reader and hooked it up and the only code currently showing is a P3030. Now I think if I hear it right this could be corroded terminals so I am planning to remove the battery this weekend and take a peak at it but I had a question. Even with that with a new 12 batter should the inverter pump turned on and started circulating coolant? I hear lots of noises like if I pump the brakes I hear a pump kick on. I hear some noise from the back of the car but the pump isn't pumping. My fear is that what really happened to the previous owner was that the pump failed and it fried the inverter and despite telling me there were no check engine lights on there might have been. I am just asking for any help along my project car journey. This is a 2002 Prius with 224,000 on it. I can say this in my defense I bought this to learn as much about hybrids as I could and I only paid 600.00 for it

 

Thanks so much for the advice and the thoughts on the inverter pump. I will wait to see what happens when I have a good pack in the car before I decide if its bad or not. Thanks space_rat for telling me that it is the traction battery that runs that pump.

Ok update!! I was able to get a techstream cable and software and hooked it up and well I was lost on how to use it and yes I should have taken time on youtube or something to learn how to get to use it right but I was able to again get a P3030 code from it as well. I was able to get to the HV battery and I hit what looked like a snow flake in the lower right corner and it brought up a screen that showed all the battery pack voltages. Ha ha ha ha it wasn't good there were many that read 0. So I pull the pack out of the car and it was very badly corroded. I took all of the buss bars off and started testing each cell individually and well the techstream was right a large amount of these cells were reading 0 so not good. I have found maybe 10 of them to have been low and using a RC hobby charger have charged them to see if they will hold a charge and started looking for cells to replace the 0 ones. I am thinking about just putting gen 2 cells in it cause they seem way more available what are your thoughts on that? I know it would require me to replace all cells to gen 2 but then if this doesn't work and I have to give up on this car I would have gen 2 cells for another car. I have found a guy on ebay that sells gen 2 cells that have been load tested for 200.00 for 10 of them that would mean if I buy 4 sets of 10 giving me 40 it would cost me 800 and I would have 2 extra cells to pick the best out of them. Any thoughts on that? I hear that this works good but didn't know if anyone knew of any issues with that. I think my thinking is I don't want to spend 800.00 and then find that I can't use this car and then I have a gen 1 pack that very few people will want ha ha.

Either way I want to replace the bus bar or wiring loom in the battery does anyone have the part number for that? I have soaked and cleaned the old bars and nuts but the amount of electrolite that is all over the wiring harness has me worried about reusing the original.

 

So found a cool company here in Indiana called auto be yours. Went there today and bought 40 gen 2 cells. The place was way cool met some great knowledgeable people. So now got cells to rebuild the pack with yahoo!!

 

Well exciting news!! I assembled the pack just like I was told to from my vendor and put the pack back in the car and to my complete amazement it started up. It was crazy no triangle of death actually no check engine light it was all good except a blinking ABS light. I let it run till it turned the engine off. I carefully drove up and down the driveway it sounded like the brakes were dragging it had been sitting a long while but before long it was like magic the abs light turned off and had good breaks it came on again a few times but then it stopped coming on at all. I ended up driving to the gas station to fill it up with gas and then I got air in the tires. I ended up driving it around for about 20 miles are so it seems to be running good. I want to do the brakes all the way around and I am seeing flow in the inverter coolant but it is low so going to go get some in the morning. I can't believe its on the road. Sounds like it might need some struts and maybe some either new or I have to redo the headlight lenses they are very yellow. Hey does anyone know if the dash is suppose to have like back lights. There seems to be no lights on any of the dials or buttons on the dash making it a little hard to adjust the temp and fan while driving at night. Also found out the the cruse will turn on but not set as well as a strange one if I pull the bright like I am flashing them at someone they got to bright but if I put it forward to turn on the brights they don't go to bright they stay the same. Fun Fun. I hooked up techstream and all the batteries were within a few tenths of each other seems like a good pack. Brian I think they balanced them before they gave them to me but not sure. Just out of my mind that I got this car this far ha ha. Hope it continues to run and I get to enjoy it for a long while. I am far from done but wanted to thank the forum for the help and encouragement to get this project underway and to where I am now. Thanks again.

Ok next steps what is the opinion here about changing the transmission fluid I have seen some videos on how to do it but what is everyone's thoughts on that. I figure I will change the oil here this next week just to make sure we are good i'm thinking about spark plugs any other thing I am not thinking about?

Mark

 

Ok so you know your a newbie when you don't even know that you don't have your lights on ha ha. Ok so solved most of my issues from the earlier post. I figured out that I don't have auto headlights but rather driving lights ha ha so when I actually turn on the headlights then push the lever forward to turn on the brights the come on. Ok and then on the back lights I bought this with the dash under the steering wheel had been removed to gain access for them to switch out a ignition switch that wasn't bad in the first place but in doing that they disconnected the dimmer for the dash lights. When I found it in the cover and removed it and plugged it in then they came on. So multiple mysteries solved. Still no gain on the cruse control but moving forward. I want to put the dash back together does anyone have a blow up of how all the lower covers go together in what order with what screws. these are the covers under the steering wheel. I cant believe how much I have learned in this single car ha ha. I am already eyeing my next prius hopefully a gen 2.