VCS, Red Exclamation, Yellow Exclamation, Check Engine Lights all suddenly turned on

Hey everyone,

While my car was idling in a CVS parking lot, the VCS, Red Exclamation in a triangle, Yellow Exclamation in a circle and the check engine lights all suddenly turned on.

In reading the forums, it seems the two most likely issues would either be the inverter pump (which I had replaced as part of the recall, and I see the fluid moving in the reservoir), or possibly a bad 12v battery (which I had replaced last year with the forum recommended Optima Yellow Top).

I checked for error codes, and there were numerous ones there at first, but I think that might have been related to the old 12v battery dying (I never reset after that). I cleared the codes, and no new codes are generating.

The car has 193,000 miles on it. I have had no performance issues with driving it up until now. I get the oil changed regularly - with the last few oil changes, I've noticed that the car is burning through all of the oil (it's not leaking, as I don't have any oil stains on my driveway). Not sure if that's related to this issue or not.

Just wondering if anyone has any thoughts that I should consider before I take it into the dealer (which I'd like to avoid if possible).

Thanks.

 

I forgot to mention that the car still runs and is drive-able.

 

I did do a battery check as part of the troubleshooting -

Press “Vehicle Signal Check” - the battery voltage is shown and should be about 12.4 to 12.8 Volts (normal for an unloaded battery) [My voltage was 12.6]
- Again without brake pedal, press Power button and release to put a current load on the battery - the voltage should stay above 12.0V (if less than 12.0V the battery is not well, or there is a fault or unusual load somewhere) [my voltage was 11.9 - I thought this was "close enough", but maybe not?]
- Press brake pedal and press Power button once to enter "Ready" mode - the battery is now charging at about 14V (if less than 13.6V or more than 14.4 there may be a problem with the charging circuit) [my voltage was 14.1]

The second test worried me a little, but considering the other tests were OK, and how close it was to normal, I thought it was ok.

 

Thanks for the responses. I sure hope it's not the Optima battery, considering I just replaced it.. then again, considering the alternatives, maybe that's not so bad.

 

Well, I drove it a bit more, and what the car was doing wasn't encouraging.

On the 10 minute drive, the battery never got above 2 red bars (mostly was 1 red), and I rarely saw the ICE charging the battery - only braking consistently would show arrows charging the battery. The ICE ran constantly, and there was a significant delay between when I'd push the pedal down, and when I'd feel the engine move the car. Towards the end of the drive, I was flooring it, and not moving much at all. The engine would rev, but it felt like the gear wasn't catching (as if I was holding the clutch down in a manual transmission). After a few seconds, the gear caught and it moved, but it was no where near the power it normally would be, and I was struggling to get up the small hill my house is on.

 

Yes - There were times I would have to add oil to make it 5k miles for the oil change. The last few times I had an oil change, they basically said I was running on little to no oil.

Oh, the dash was lit up - it had all the lights I mentioned above on. But I wanted to see if it was driveable, and maybe get it to generate a code (it did not, at least not a code that I could see in the screen you get to from turning the lights on and off while holding Info)

 

Friend came by with a reader, and pulled 2 codes down: P3014 and P0A80. If I'm reading my search results right on these, that's the traction battery (p0A80) and Battery Block 4 becomes weak (P3014).

Perhaps I should just start looking at a new vehicle.. Toyota's running 0% APR for 60 months for the next few days..... it was a good run, right?