I just got a Prius! (And now I have to work on it!)

Welcome to the forum. I am pretty sure your hybrid cooling fan is dirty. You too be a video and you will see how to remove clean and replace it. I run the dr Prius app and I have had great results. AFTER you clean the hybrid fan. Force charge the Hybrid battery in your driveway.
put the car in reverse and floor BOTH the brake and the gas pedal. The Hybrid battery should charge to full in about 1 min or 2. See if that helps delay the red triangle from coming back. Also I had a friends Prius burning oil and his turned out that the hose connected to the PCV valve was disconnected. A simple fix. You too be replacing that along with new spark plugs. And that will go a long way. Also I would replace the PCV valve. A pretty easy job and a new valve is $8 at Your local auto parts store. If you still have the triangle and check engine light I would buy the Dr Prius App and pull the codes.

 

3prongPaul is in your area? and has vast 6experince with prius ---and maybe able to do some of the work for you ... if he is still in the business ...

 

$300 for this car is an incredible deal. Made better by the fact that you're in love with the car and fixing it yourself!

I went the OEM battery route for about $1800 after tax and did it myself. It was a lot of money but I am feeling pretty good about the car and that I won't have to deal it ever again. You can try to strip the interior molding, leaving behind only the fan and battery, before you visit the dealer. This way you can talk down the labor price. If the quote is $300, I would take it to save yourself the aggravation, and improve the warranty from 1yr to 3yrs.

That said, most stories I hear here about cell replacement are very positive.

The gloves are about $50 on Amazon and I sold it on ebay for $15-ish. If you've worked on high voltage stuff before then I think you are good with a couple pairs of latex gloves, if that.

The safety plug literally disconnects the battery circuit, and it is well-designed and the terminals are completely recessed. You can't touch it unless you are purposely trying to.

POSITIVE END +==== SAFETY PLUG ==== - NEGATIVE END
Does that make sense?

The riskiest part will be installing the new jumpers when you do have to contact the terminals. However you are only contacting one terminal at a time, and with the safety plug disconnected no less. If you keep one hand behind the back, wear long sleeves, then not trying to hug the thing after taking a dip in the ocean, you will be fine.

With my safety plug disconnected, I went around probing everything I was going to touch with my multimeter and measured 0 everywhere. Used my gloves anyway. It's cheap insurance if you are nervous about it.

You should know that lots of people have problems with the "combination meter" or green speedometer/heads-up display assembly. You have to rip the whole dash apart for that one, and apparently the issue is some capacitors. The CD/radio kit is also really dated and people have some really nice radios here.

 

it is a single 100uF 16V cap, and a 200 will work (if i recall correctly) , the capictance goes down over time and that component prob. needed all it could get, my old one measured around 70 or 80 uF (and the dash would light up maybe once per fill, 1x per 10 starts at best) -- yes hour+ to get the dash apart (first time), to do a 15 min? solder removal and resolder (legged component will be the best to replace this as there are large pads) - unless you currently work at an SMD fab lab , then go for the SMD...

 

now the MFD screen is dim and they made them brighter /clearer on the 06 ,.. apparently sligthly larger .. and changed the back connections, then there is the Nav/No navigation option -- mine is no-nav and looks like i have to buy the whole pullout part to get a reasonably priced used unit as a new one for 04\05 is astronomical !

 

sounds like your thinking too much into everything. I picked up a prius with 240k miles and got the battery light shortly after.

I just called around and got a local dealer to charge $1800 for the bacttery( I found cheaper farther out but I stuck with local).

You dont need the gloves or anything. I did everything myself in about 2hrs in my garage. when removing the battery its all sealed and already split to 120v then you quickly cut the cells down to invdividuals. Just take your time and follow some youtube videos.

The p0420 ive gotten from time to time, a good chance its just the o2 sensor but I bet you just need to drive it alot and clean everything out.

 

It's true that the safety interlock features built into the high-voltage system make your personal protective equipment sort of redundant most of the time.

Do pay attention, though, to any trouble codes that might be recorded before you start this work.

If any of the codes are the ones referring to high-voltage isolation faults, then you should think extra hard about assuming that the built-in protective features are going to substitute for your PPE.

 

No, nothing to worry about, unless it is greater than 0.3 V lower. Seems to be how it goes. It might get closer to the others after reconditioning.

What is the current you are putting into the module?

 

You might want to consider 325 mA below 7.2 V and above 8.1 V, just to be cautious.

 

Your numbers look similar to my experience with my 2005 with 220K miles - I purchased 4 used cells locally that had been "refurbished" by a supplier that does this as a side. I replaced both cells in that block with 2 of the refurbished ones and took the "good" cell from that block and put it in place of the lowest voltage cell in another block. I built a wire bundle to connect all the negatives and all the positives to make a huge 7.8V battery to balance all the cells charges. I put the battery back in and it has been working since - in retrospect, I should NOT have put the two rebuilt cells into the same block as now that block is considerably better than all the rest as shown on the DR.Prius app. The battery works fine- it just charges and discharges while driving faster than a new battery should and the gas engine starts helping to drive the car by about 12MPH. I am getting about 34MPG with it.

I did this after ordering a set of "new prius batteries" back in March at the beginning of the CV19 lockdowns and not being able to wait on the backorder time frame. Subsequently I found a complete used battery for $200 figuring that I could install the New Prius batteries into the used battery while still driving the car with the old battery and then switching them out. When I got the used battery home and checked the cells they all looked really good so I purchased a couple of hobby chargers and spent a month doing the charge/discharge dance on it and in the end was able to get all of the cells to exceed 6200mah discharge capacity. The YouTube videos on how to do this were very helpful. As expected just as I finished refurbishing the used battery I received the email that my "New Prius Batteries" had just been shipped. Now I have two good batteries

 

@TMR-JWAP dud some extensive testing on a failed refurbished pack and documented it here in a thread. I strongly suspect deep cycling many times reduces the overall life of the module. J believe Hybrid Automotive memtiins that in their grid charger documentation.

 

I said the same thing on my first round of wack-a-mole. By the third round, umm, not so much.....

GOOD LUCK!