This weekend I spruced up one of our Prius to get it ready for sale. I shampooed the carpets, the front driver and back passenger foot wells were particularly bad due to spilled drinks. Once done I put it on my Hybrid Automotive charger to top balance the hybrid battery and make sure it's in tip top shape, ( the battery is strong so no need for a full re-conditioning). This morning I pop out and take it off charge before I have breakfast and shower. But the 12v battery is dead as a dodo. Probably from having all the doors open and I think I turned the keyless entry sensor back on accidentally. After breakfast and shower, I trick the car into starting using a small motorcycle battery I have, then reconnect the cars 12v battery. This is when my airbag light comes on. No codes in the computer using my OBD reader. My thoughts are :- - Moving the seats around a lot may have done something. - Excess moisture in the driver and rear passenger side footwell from cleaning may have messed with something. - Other funky stuff from the dead battery issue. (EDIT) - Another possibility, I swapped in a new passenger seatbelt, and tried a new driver seatbelt but that one was faulty so went back to the original. Do the seatbelt sensors have anything to do with this system? I can't find how to reset the airbag system other than putting a paperclip into the yellow under seat connectors, which I tried with no luck. I think it's fuse 30, which I pulled and looks to be good. Any ideas for me? I need to get this car sold to pay for my last term of college in March. Thanks.
Once 12v if fully charged and inside of car dries out hopefully things will go better. The one car I work on that has this problem is due to her little dogs getting fed up with being left alone in her car for so long and they started chewing on the plugs and wires under the passenger seat. so I grabbed those plugs and wires off a Prius at the junk yard and hope replacing them resolves it. There's also lots of articles on PriusChat about this problem. So Google search it and read all you can.
You're going to need to know what the codes are to know what the problem is. If your scan tool won't show them, the Gen 2 airbag ECU was still able to blink its codes on the dash lights. You use a jumper between the Tc and CG pins at the car's diagnostic connector under the dash. Count the blinks on the airbag light. A search should find threads with more details about that. Yes. Because the airbag system is bombs, it is a good example of the kind of a deal where if there's something you don't know about it, reading the manual is a good idea, and guessing is not as good an idea. Not for that kind of a system. Even though I can't roll time back and correct that, you can make a resolution from this point forward that you're not going to stick any paperclips in any more airbag squib connectors ever.
You need to be able to read the codes. Either by flash codes as suggested, or by getting access to a more capable scantool. (Probably can't hurt to swing by an auto parts store to see if they will/can pull airbag codes). What you were doing with the seat belts may have set codes originally. (or maybe something got wet during the cleaning). Poking paperclips into connectors (that aren't designed for that) can damage them and cause more problems and codes. At this point you need to find out what the airbag ecu doesn't like - and not guess. Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.
I wasn't just blindly poking things with paperclips. I read up on a test to see if the seat sensor was the problem. I swapped the seatbelt, the old one got a bit funky and I wanted a clean one for sale. The driver side the seller sent me was faulty so I uninstalled that one and put the original back in. I'm wondering if it has crash memory or something, as the belt looked to be damaged and clutch didn't work properly. I wouldn't mind picking up a good reader that can do ABS, airbags, brake bleeding function and any other useful things that are beyond my Torque Pro app, but there's so many options, and I am a ridiculous researcher for all purchases that I've got analysis paralysis. So I'm open to suggestions for a good deal on those. Something possibly got wet during cleaning, but it wasn't an excessive amount of water, it wasn't pooling or anything like that.
There are a lot of scan tool options, so analysis paralysis can be a thing, but it doesn't stop you from getting the blink codes to find out what your airbag ECU wants to tell you.
This guy. I was so pished off that an ebay seller sold me a junk seatbelt for the driver side, when putting the old back in, I had lost focus and did not plug the sensor back in. Crisis averted, always look on the bright side of life.
