New I read an article that suggested the HC battery blower can become clogged on Gen II's. I have a PDF that describes how to get to and clean the blower. My main concern is the last statement - "Notice: certain systems need to be initialized after disconnecting and reconnecting the cable from the negative (-) battery terminal.". I am not concerned with resetting the clock or a couple of radio presets. How much of a hassle is involved in this? Thanks for the advice. Read more: http://priuschat.com/threads/weird-stuff-happening-mpgs-dropping-test-the-battery.73400/#ixzz2EHlGy75m
It's no big deal to reset things, but why would you need to disconnect the 12 volt to clean the blower? Can't you just do the job with the car off?
Just trying to follow the instructions as printed. I thought the same thing, no biggie with car off. Probably will just do that and save the headache.
Except that the blower can come on sometime after you turn off the systems or think you do. Recall that many of these systems are smart (the simple examples are the sensor that detects your approaching fob and prepares the brake system for you to safely use the car and the one that detects the click of the fob to open the lock). So the rule is disconnect the battery anytime you play with something that, if it goes on or off unexpectedly, can hurt or kill you (around airbags, for example) and blowers can mangle your fingers. Not to say that you couldn't unplug a blower from its power harness and then mess with its mechanicals safely. On another car and another forum we are debugging a parasitic current draw hours after the key is removed and have charts from the manufacturer showing how much each circuit draws after 5, 10, etc minutes up to 4 hours later. But that manufacturer has books (or electronic documents now) that show you this and can be purchased. Never seen reference to anything similar from Toyota
Couple of questions: Who's the "pdf" by? Maybe post it? (Actually, you might not be able to, 'till you have more postings) If it's a Toyota instruction, I'd suspect you don't need to disconnect the 12 volt, that it's mainly their lawyers talking. I've had a look at ours (3rd gen), just dug down to it, without disconnecting battery. I found the hatch floor had some very tenacious fasteners, thought I might break them. Maybe this was by design, to discourage exploration?
The HV battery blower motor will not run with the car off. There is no need to disconnect the 12V battery other than extreme caution and trial lawyers as stated above.
