2005. 242,000 miles. Had the car for about a year. Ran great after I replaced one of the battery modules at purchase. Couple weeks ago the car lost power and the dash went dark. Ordered techstream and a cord. Code said combination meter or harness. Spent a lot of effort working that issue out but now the combination meter is working except the fuel gauge shows one flashing square. When it originally failed it showed 2 steady squares. I added 6 gallons of fuel and cleared the codes and disconnected the 12v for a few minutes but the fuel gauge still shows one flashing square. The car now doesn't throw the combination meter codes but does throw engine failed to start and fuel run out codes. The engine will run and the car can be put into drive and moved as long as I keep walking along and giving it a bit of starting fluid, so it isn't getting gas now.
Intermittent combo meter failure is a known issue with a 9 year warranty extension. Have you tried clearing the codes with Techstream?
Hello. Thanks for the response. Yes, I clear the codes, receive a confirmation message and have allowed techstream to verify that the codes are clear. I've done this several times. The car has never been wrecked but I did use a combination meter and harness from a car that had suffered a hard front impact during the trouble shooting process. Could that have triggered a safety feature that killed the fuel pump?
I'm just brainstorming, but it sounds like what may have occurred is that the failure of the combination meter caused it to not update the fuel gauge properly, and you ran out of gas as a consequence. If that's the case, then what would be occurring is that there's air in the fuel line and it's not getting cleared because the fuel pump isn't able to run for long enough. What a mechanic would do to solve it is unplug the fuel line in the hood and drain it into a bucket, then bypass the fuel pump relay (or other method) to run the fuel pump and fuel through to front of the car until all the air bubbles are cleared, then reattach the fuel line, clear the codes, and start the car as normal. If you follow this process you would find out whether the problem is trapped air in the fuel lines or a failed fuel pump. I would google solutions to the current codes that you have and see if there are solutions out there. I know there are at least a few threads on PriusChat of how to deal with the car once you've ran out of gas (the Prius cannot simply be refilled like other cars to resolve the problems).
