Gen 2 versus lightning bolt

I wonder what that sounded like from the backseat with the top of your head right at the headliner.

 

Maybe never heard a thing, ever again either.

 

What do you think the burning looking things under the car before the lightning strike are? Is it possible it drove into the lightning strike?

 

Lightning doesn't terminate at the car, it goes to ground through the path of least resistance. Often passes through many things on the way.

As far as driving into it, that would be quite the feat to drive into it. Even Joey Chitwood wouldn't have been able to manage that.

 

"Just after catching an amazing tornadoe suddently I felt a slight shock and my ears were left ringing!"

 

It almost seems as if those sparks occur under the car both front and back before the ball of flame at the back.

 

There are many instances where lightning goes from ground to cloud. Usually a camera cannot record it though.

 

Suspect the sparks were burning metal from the lightning strike being blown by heavy wind...

 

Leadfoot put a direct youtube link to the footage from the other car over in this thread.

If I go through that frame by frame, I see the tire flashes first appear in the same frame as the plasma trail from the sky. That trail lasts only one frame. The incandescence at the tires lasts for five frames.

The poor little shark-fin antenna is gone in two frames. The puff of smoke it turned into has blown a full car length behind the car by frame 6.

The headlights go out in the exact same frame as the initial flash. The marker lights, oddly, stay on, though they seem maybe dimmer.

The "1/5" speed rendering has a frame that I don't see in the natural-speed one, all white at the bottom but with much more of the lightning bolt shown in the sky. The 1/20 speed rendering just has five all-white frames there.

At least, this is what I see in youtube's player using . to advance by 'frame'. Youtube's re-encoding probably plays some role here.

 

The biggest "ball of flame" is the actual lightning bolt in the video frame just before that, which is solid white from overexposure. The OP link doesn't include that, but starts at the next video frame after the main bolt. That is where you see the sparks and plasma trail and vaporizing antenna.

See the link in post #10 for more video, including before the bolt and the single video frame of the bolt itself.

 

Pi here! The owner of the Prius. The dealership is not optimistic about fixing it, saying today the ECM needs to be replaced before the they could continue diagnosing, about a $1000 repair.

I do have some sentimental value in it as it was a gift from my late Grandpa, and I've put a bunch of modifications in it like a new head unit and lift kit. But I'm a storm chaser and it's already at 248,000 miles, so I figured it wouldn't be long before it became too expensive to maintain anyway. It would be amazing to drive around a car that's been through all that, but neither do I want it to be a money pit either.

Fellow Prius owners, would you take the chance to replace the ECM? Used car prices are pretty crazy right now, not to mention gas. So I probably couldn't bare to to spend more than $3500. But would love to see it on the road again.

 

They're a bunch of criminals... They charge $800 for that part you can get used on Ebay for $100 and they Charge $200 to install it even though it takes barely an hour to install. If you lived near me that same repair would be $150. But it might be low as $50 because sometimes you can clean and repair the existing part.

You don't want them fixing stuff before they do a thorough diagnosis of what needs to be replaced and they're too dishonest and greedy to do that. Don't you have a mechanic friend who can help with figuring out what's damaged? The stealership is going to shrug their shoulders soon as they empty your bank account because their goal isn't to help you it's to take as much money as they can till you give up and then try to sell you a finance package for something you can't afford.

If you have the skills to install a head unit and lift kit, then you have the skills to handle this. And even if you have to replace the battery pack with new or rebuilt, some stealerships will sell it to you for $1650 if you call around enough. Of course they have a $1350 core deposit that you get back when you give them your old pack so that's a hassle.

You can also upgrade your pack with one of these via my affiliate link: https://projectlithium.com/?ref=9qLPw

Let us know how we can help walk you through this diagnosis? Also give us as many details as possible about what's fried and where you see soot.

 

eBAY has lots of ECM's for your PRIUS for around $60, you can easily install it yourself in under an hour
Buy the ECM and fix it yourself for $60

 

Huh, well I'd definitely would love to replace to the ECM myself. I found one tutorial and it totally looks managable for me! Though I am worried about the programming. Wouldn't I have to pair the immobilizer to the new ECM? Assuming the immobilizer isn't fried too? Or is it the kind of thing if I get another one from the same 2009 it'll just work after the swap? Also, I know there's multiple ECUs in the car, but is there only 1 ECM? Should I ask for a part number?

A big monkey wrench in this whole thing is the lightning strike happened 2 states away over in Fort Dodge, Iwoa. So to replace it myself I would first have to get back there and then ask if I could swap it in the parking lot. Another problem is my 12v battery nearly got ruined last year from my ground wire getting loose for a month. So the dealership has a temp battery in there for troubleshooting. If they don't let me use it, or it's too expensive to buy, could I hook up jumper cables from another car for the pairing process?

Thanks so much TMR-JWAP! I might go storm chasing on Friday in a rental, so if I can find a part locally on eBay tomorrow then I'll head over to Iowa first on Thursday. If I can't get there until next week, and I verify the 2007 and 2009 use the same part I may take you up on that! I do know my way around a multimeter, and I already checked for popped fuses, but I still may have dealership diagnose it further after replacing the ECM.

 

The Engine Control Module on a Gen2 Prius is plug and play. If you can see the side of the ECM while it's mounted (tricky but possible, esp if you have a videoscope), then you can read the part number off the old unit. Remove the lower glovebox and it's mounted next to (on the left side of) the hybrid control ecu. Order a replacement from ebay with the same number.

There is no vehicle specific "programming" to do on a Gen2. Security data and VIN are stored in different ecu's. For testing I carefully twist the connectors around to just plug in the replacement ECM (let it dangle) and see what that does. About the only thing I would do is clean the throttle body bore- if that has heavy deposits then the "new" ECM won't know this and maybe the engine will spin but not start.

Ideally, you would have a diagnostic report from the dealer- specifically one that details all the ecu's that were scanned, and which ones responded and did or did not have codes.

Stepping back a bit- what does your car do (or not do) when you try to ready up? If the ECM was totally dead the car should still power up and move some on EV - battery. If the dash doesn't come on then more things are wrong. Which points back to checking all parts of the 12V power system (and the system scan results would help with that).

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

The easiest and least expensive way to diagnose and repair this car is to get the vehicle towed to a place where there's a similar Prius and you can spend a day or two swapping out fried parts till you can get the car working normally. Then you'll have a list of what needs to be replaced before you spend any money and you can decide how much it's going to cost.

In looking at the video, my biggest concern is the burning bits of metal / sparks in the front end. That could be a lot of fried parts in those sparks.

 

Billy,
I live in the Springs. I have 2 Prii
Both 2008. Let me know if you need help.

 

That'd be great if you could help him... Of course he's gotta get his car back into town first and sounds like it happened a long ways away. But if you can help him, we'll back you up with replacement parts real quick if he accidentally fries any of your parts.