Need Help

Sounds like you may need to clean the throttle body.

replacing-the-mass-air-flow-sensor-cleaning-the-throttle-body.139073

 

AND.....while it is doing all of that, are there never any trouble codes set ?
All kinds of warning lights should come on, I would think.
Sounds to me kind of like your hybrid battery system is failing.

 

I'd kind of like clarification on what it means to say "shutting off." Describe exactly what happens. I'll have to assume that you already know that the gas engine is supposed to "shut off" under all sorts of conditions. But I hate making assumptions... Either way, what you said is too vague to provide a response. And if things are that much of a disaster, as sam spade 2 said you'd have warning / error lights on the dash.

 

If lights are still on, then it's not "completely shut off." Does it say "Ready?" Are you saying is has no power at all and won't go when you get on the accelerator? The engine is supposed to shut off when it's fully warmed up and not actually needed for propulsion.

 

And I don't know how else to explain it to you. If the dash lights are on and it says "Ready" over the PRNDB display then the car is on an ready to go. This is the case whether the gas engine is idling or not. Get over the whole "engine running" issue. If the car is warmed up and you are sitting idle, then a real problem would be the opposite - that the gas engine KEEPS RUNNING. It's SUPPOSED TO shut off until your foot on the accelerator asks for enough a** to make the car go.

So if that is the case - you hit the accelerator and the car doesn't go and/or the gas engine doesn't kick in as needed - then the first thing I'd wonder about is the accelerator position sensor. You might be pressing on the throttle but if the sensor attached to the throttle can't "see" that, then ... well, nothing would happen because the ECU doesn't know you're asking for power. So it will remain sitting in Ready mode with the gas engine off and not sending any power to the wheels.

Do you have any kind of an automotive scanner?

 

Any way you could post video?

 

Sigh. Look up top center of the dash where your speedometer is and where the PRNDB (Park/Reverse/Neutral/Drive/engine Braking) indicator is. Everytime you start the car, when it is ready to go, it says "Ready" right above that. It's called "Ready mode" - and it tells Prius (or more generically, hybrid) drivers that the car is on and ready to go even if the gas engine isn't running.

A code reader is not necessarily a scanner, but many are. if you have a scanner you can look at "live data" - various aspects of what the ECU sees as it is happening. Even if it's just a generic scanner that can't read fancy Toyota stuff, any of them will give you a reading for a "throttle position sensor" (TPS). This isn't exactly the same thing as the accelerator position sensor. But if you could catch it during malfunction and graph the TPS readings it just might tell you a lot.

 

Are you postitive this car is actually a Prius? Are you saying you have never seen this indicator on the dash in seven years?

Can you describe that any further? What leads you to think it might be ABS?

 

I'm not the one asking for help, and for you to usefully get any, by this point you'll probably need to include images or video of the dash in your car, because if it is somehow different from the illustration in #13, there won't be any way for the rest of us, who are familiar with the normal dash indicators, to know that.

 

I don't think your earlier posts mentioned that the ABS light is on.

With that light on, there certainly are trouble codes, at least in the brake ECU, if not in the other ECUs in the car.

If the scan tool you are using is not showing you any codes, you have an easy option to get the brake system trouble codes without needing any scan tool, using the method where you jumper the Tc and CG terminals and count light blinks, as described further here.

Not all of the ECUs in the car participate in the code-blinking scheme; there are a couple that can only be read by a scan tool (and only by the few scan tools that work with Gen 1 Prius, at that).

But several of them do, definitely including the brake ECU, and even just having those codes will be useful progress.

 

Many lower cost code readers and those used at auto parts stores rarely read the specialized codes of a Prius. A first generation Prius looks a lot like a Corolla of the same year.

 

I've owned my '01 since 2003, and didn't recall ever noticing the 'ready' light either. Had to go out and start it just now and sure enough it's right there above the gear shift indicator. It's less obvious with the gen1's, since unlike newer generations, the ICE always starts up like a normal car when you turn the key, so that's how to know it's on.

 

Looks a lot more like the Toyota Echo in its day.