Reverse polarity jump / Fried inverter / 2008 Prius

There saying to read the manual because you never ever really have to touch the battery in the trunk .

Toyota gave you real nice and convenient jump point under the hood If your trying to jump the battery in the trunk in the dark in its deep hole yes you will blow it up. Its a extreme hassle to open the hatch with a dead battery. Easy to pop the hood.

We have seen this hundreds of times on this site. Majority of people have no idea there's jump points under the hood. RTFM. please.

Btw, your battery is toast. That little battery one good complete discharge done by a light the most perfect discharger a light bulb and it will kill it. Buy a new battery asap or you will be right back here.

 

somewhat related, one day I’m walking to my gym and I see this Arab with his hood up, staring at it. I asked what’s wrong? “ car won’t start “ so I look at his battery connection and there’s corrosion everywhere. So I told him to lightly tap the + and - connectors. He then began to literally beat the hell out those connectors, I told him that was not necessary and he could stop, he still persisted. He appeared to be spanking the car for not working. I had to inwardly laugh, but did not want to embarrass him. So I finally convinced him to start the car and it did. He was obviously an immigrant with little command of English. I felt sorry for him.
To anybody from the Middle East reading this, hopefully you are not offended, the term Arab is a mild description of somebody of unknown middle east origins.

 

You can still reverse the connection at the under hood jump point. Easy.

If there was some cheap/practical way to melt something before the 4G inverter that'd be great, because poop happens. All it takes is a moments inattention.

Disclaimer: it's been pointed out it's not practical, but sure would be nice.

 

There is, Red on Red, Black on Black. All batteries should be universally marked, many are. Never give a lead to a novice and tell them to connect it to ground / positive. Make all connections yourself. Also the average battery has a much larger capacity than the smaller Prius battery, so reversing the leads will ruin the Prius battery immediately,before one has even had a chance to start the Prius. Also a shower of sparks should accompany this event letting you know you, or somebody have just connected the hot lead to chassis ground.
I once saw a horrible accident on a poor innocent kid using 24-48 volts to turn over a conversion engine, ( starts on gasoline then switches to diesel) So he makes contact with a battery lead, gasoline comes out of the portals, as planned, sprays the kid, he runs down the center aisle totally fired up.This quick thinker jumps off a D7 tractor and gives the kid a beautiful flying block tackle and throws his jacket over the kid smothering the fire. End of story, kid survived, medically discharged, 40 % burns. Moral of story: Nobody in charge.

 

Agreed, I find the under the hood points very funky. That area should be standardized, for safety and usability.

 

Ok guys. You heard the electrician...

 

How about getting these jumper cables...

Mychanic Smart Jumper Cables

Paul.

 

Yeah I think the main key is to deal with one complete connection at a time, and go from good to dead. So:

Good red to dead red.
Good black to dead black (or ground, preferably).

Still, the BEST design is one that is foolproof, 'cus everybody plays the fool sometimes.

 

I'm glad that you got eventually got it fixed without the dealer taking all you money Michael.

One good tip when jump starting is to only connect the one jumper lead directly to the battery terminals (donor +ve to prius +ive), and to always connect the other lead only from chassis to chassis.

This way you actually cannot reverse the polarity, although it is still possible to make a short circuit (if for example they connect to the wrong battery post on the donor car), but this is much less severe than reversing the polarity.

As JerryMildred mentioned, if you first just brush the chassis connection briefly (to a chassis bolt for example) to check for sparks then at least it's only a partial short circuit at that (and as I said never a full reverse polarity this way). I would prefer to always make sure that the person offering the jump start at least allowed me to inspect connections at their end before making the final chassis connection to the Prius.

Edit. Posted at the same time as Mendel who beat me to the punch.

 

Maybe something like the OBD standard could be introduced, for jumpstarting. All cars to have a standardized jumpstart receptical, and jumper cables with non-reversable plugs at the ends. It'd take time to transition, but it seems like the transition to expensive fragile electronics requires a similar transition in jumpstart hardware.

 

Great idea.

 

A real life NOW fix is the small lithium battery pack I have, comes with 8 in. cables as part of set and has capability of charging other products, Iphone, mini- computer, etc. Had it for about three years now and still have not needed it. so, I can’t say it works. and, only about $35.00, forgot, one red clamp and one black clamp.

 

Apologies, screwed-up a bit. The kosher sequence:

Dead red to good red.
Good black to dead black (or ground, preferably).




Just a thought, if you're dealing with jumper cables: maybe completely separate them, pull them apart to have two cables. Then, approach the cars with just the red cable, get that done completely, then go back and get the black cable.

 

While jump starting my toyota prius i mistakely reversed polarity and the dash board is not showing anything except the head lights are turned on and the signals too but the display is not poping up what should i need to check ??

 

I'm good at grumbling, not so good at solving your problem. Hopefully someone with more electrical knowledge will read and respond.

 

You may have shorted the system by that mistake. Check the fuses at the location of the battery. I think you have maybe 150A fuse or so there. You could also check the fuses at the hood. Just pray this hasn't affected your inverter/converter assembly.

 

And check your 12V battery.

 

I think, that year you may be able to replace the large ampere fuse instead of having to replace the whole pos. cable. check all with a multimeter.

 

Here's what I'm thinking of. Isn't it possible, for instance, a diode is put inline jumper cables, to prevent instances (mistakes) like this?

 

You'd think they would do something like that. Or make the cables and batteries with plugs instead of clamps and make them so you can't reverse them.