Gearbox change difficulty?

Discussion in 'Gen 3 Prius Technical Discussion' started by deis, Jan 3, 2024.

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  1. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    One of the key things that article illustrates is it isn't necessary to just poke around at a problem. The AECS guys got out a 'scope and used an inductive pickup to know what the problem was and which plug it was before they changed it.
     
    #21 ChapmanF, Jan 9, 2024
  2. deis

    deis Junior Member

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    That was an interesting article indeed. Maybe I've got an actual misfire (no codes ever though). I will say though, there are times when it will run fine, often when stone cold, where the supposed transaxle damper rattle isn't there.
    Most times it's there when decelerate to a point where throttle is enough to maintain speed on a level road, or light acceleration. I can definately, provoke the rattle. When accelerating hard in power mode from traffic lights, the motors zoom as they should, at the same time there's a pronounced clunks as the engine starts and judders until it's picked up some speed. It was a bit unnerving at first, but it still works fine off the line and I feel confident it's as reliable as it once was, albeit with a bit of drama. So maybe I should consider investigating the misfire first maybe? Would a Techstream setup show some faults that my nornal OBD2 reader can't?
     
    #22 deis, Jan 9, 2024
  3. Tombukt2

    Tombukt2 Senior Member

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    On mine the 13 persona tech shows nothing everything is perfectly normal all the coils look good the freeze frame data seems to say so no matter what the car is doing this is generally just sitting in the driveway idling I can invoke the rattle just by having someone step on the gas I wish it was bad ignition or something or the fire getting put out by water just can't confirm any of that yet and there's been no loss or vanishing coolant anything everything's been pretty okay actually since the motor was put in while the motor and transmission.
     
    #23 Tombukt2, Jan 9, 2024
  4. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    The igniters do produce an "ignition feedback" IGF signal that goes back to the ECM and gives it some info about what's happening. That's what you can see with a scan tool, or what can give you the P035x codes. But the AECS guys brought out the 'scope and the inductive pickup to see more than that.
     
    #24 ChapmanF, Jan 9, 2024
  5. Tombukt2

    Tombukt2 Senior Member

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    Well that was really cool I guess hunting down somebody with the scopes and the business and all that and the hundreds of dollars an hour diagnostic fees It may be best to just let the car go I don't know what else is going to be wrong after they find that seemingly yeah that's just not for some people these cars don't seem to be worth all that diagnostic prowess considering what's failing and going bad and what's happening usually this is above 100 K write it off and let it rip That's the best answer I would have.
     
    #25 Tombukt2, Jan 10, 2024
  6. deis

    deis Junior Member

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    So no misfire fault codes produced, but could it be something else causing a misfire-like symptom that wouldn't produce a feeback. I assume the triggering circuit in the coil measures if it send the trigger, but does it also know if the secondary HV coil has fired, or how well it's fired. Is there any way to measure the resistance of the firing coil in the coil pack like you would on an old school coil? Or is it all sealed away? But even if I could do that, the resistance might change with temperature?

    I wonder if there could be a mis-timed firing issue. That article gave me that idea. But would that show up as a fault? But I'd love to get a TechStream setup working (as per other post).
     
    #26 deis, Jan 10, 2024
  7. Tombukt2

    Tombukt2 Senior Member

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    Best thing I could say is given the fact that I can't see anything on my car in the full dealer version of tech stream . I'd try to find a high performance dino shop that has a real oscilloscope or a modern-day version thereof like what Chapman was talking about that the people put on the vehicle that had the bad plug. Give him an hour of that and see what happens probably be about $100 might be some of the best diagnostic time you'll ever deal with and the person running the equipment in the test usually will walk you through what's going on and why it's going on would be interesting to see The only place near me with equipment like this is $300 an hour but that's par for the course here in the States in the UK I'm sure you can do much better Toyota mods is a big thing in the United Kingdom real big been going on there since the '70s.
     
    #27 Tombukt2, Jan 10, 2024
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