Stutters at Specific Point on Hybrid System Indicator

In older high mileage battery packs I've experienced the symptoms that you've described... Have you noticed your hybrid battery charge dropping faster than it used to? If so I suspect your hybrid battery is losing capacity and needs a few rounds of deep/cycling (reconditioning) as well as a full charge and balance between each deep cycling effort to fix the problem.

If you know how to do your own work on your car, installing the $150 charging harness is easy, but the high voltage trickle charger is a bit expensive, so maybe you can find someone on PriusChat that lives near you who has one you can periodically borrow/rent? Learn all about it here:

FAQ

and here:

BU-807: How to Restore Nickel-based Batteries – Battery University

 

Welcome to Prius Chat .

Sounds like you’ve done a bunch of work to your 2011.

When has the trans fluid been changed?

How long ago did you do all of this work?

Good luck and keep us posted .

 

Toyota has no service schedule for changing trans fluid and says fluid is good for life of the car... But the fact is the first 1000 miles of any new engine or transmission is going to get contaminated with micro-metal particles that shed as all the parts wear into their function, so change it to decrease long-term wear.

Also in your first post you said the car stutters and gets jerky at a specific hybrid battery charge level... But then in your most recent post you referred to the symptom as "shaking" which sounds more like an engine problem, than a battery problem.

 

Well, it's starting to sound like an overall power performance issue and you're gonna have to wait for whatever is wrong to get worse to figure out what to do next. I'm a gen2 person so I don't have much experience with Gen3 display. I thought eco-mode was something you could turn on or turn off? Does this problem not happen when it's not in ECO mode?

 

You said it is consistent shaking at those particular bars on the HSI, it would lead us toward engine drivability issue since this is happening at a certain engine speed, 1200-1500 rpm, maybe.

Now that you’ve mentioned you or someone did all of the cleaning and replacement including the head gasket, have you also looked into fuel pressure (perhaps a bad fuel pump?), the gasoline that you use (maybe bad quality gas and the gas turned worse when your car sat for 3 weeks?), and maybe, just maybe, EGR System wasn’t really cleaned very well or EGR valve went bad at a certain time since the cleaning?

 

Since it’s the same point every time, I’d look at the trans mounts, or the engine mount. As the ICE spins up first, then gets ignition, then injection. It’s possible that you may have a fuel issue, but I believe that you have a bad mount. The “vibration” as the ICE starts could be interpreted as a shudder.

 

Thanks for clarifying... At this point I'm fairly certain everyone's responses have likely identified what's wrong, it's just a matter of figuring out which one is the right one.

Your car generates huge amounts of sensor data and the more you can view the data when this problem occurs the more likely you'll identify the problem. The easiest way to establish that would be to use the hybrid assistant app with it's companion app hybrid reporter.

Once you have that all set up, take it for a short test drive and try to make the problem happen as often as possible. Then when you get done with the test drive, even if it's just a few miles, Hybrid assistant app will give you 10+ pages of charts and graphs of sensor data and hopefully you'll be able to zoom in on where the problem is coming from... Perhaps you could even upload that data to this thread so we can look through it as well and help you find the problem?

 

Fairly sure this function was exclusive to Gen2 Prius... Your 2011 Prius is set up differently.

 

My 2010 stutters like that for a second or two after I make a fast hard left or right turn......can't figure it out

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

I would guess funk in the fuel tank encountering the fuel filter when set in motion by the "hard" maneuver and momentarily restricting fuel flow. Just a guess but probably not. More likely it is funk in the intake manifold getting aspirated during the maneuver.

 

I came here specifically to add this remark.

 

Gen2 Prius have similar problems as a type of latency that gets increasingly worse depending on how old and in need of reconditioning the hybrid battery is, as well as an over-active traction control system. Toyota mostly addressed these issue in Gen3, but they can still be a bit problematic in some cases...

 

Any update on this? My 2011 experiences the exact same issue at the exact same point on the CHG - PWR bar. I replaced the battery with a lithium battery and it made a difference but the shaking is still there. Any advice?

 

That bar is essentially an overdressed indicator of how much load the gasoline engine is under.

If you are consistently getting roughness somewhere around the middle of that bar—or at middling engine loads, in other words—one place I would quickly look is the four small EGR passages that are in the intake manifold.

The engine uses EGR at middling loads, but not at low loads or high loads. So a roughness only at middling loads may be a roughness only when EGR is flowing. That can be because those four small passages have different amounts of clogging, so the cylinders get different amounts of EGR, and some of them misfire. At low loads or high loads, when no EGR is flowing, none of that happens.