My wife called me on Friday afternoon while I was at work. When she started the car she got the red triangle, VSC and exclamation point lights on the dash. She didn't try to drive it and had it towed to my mechanic. I swung by his yard at 5pm on Friday as he was closing for the weekend, so I didn't have time to do an in-depth check. What I noticed: MFD shows "Problem", followed by a red "car with exclamation point" icon. Battery level is low, two bars on the MFD. I pulled the codes in Techstream - only P3000 showed. I cleared the code and restarted, P3000 came right back. As soon as the ignition is turned on, the battery cooling fan kicks in at high speed. The duct looks pretty clean, so I don't think there's a blockage. The second time I turned the ignition on, the engine felt as if it was "hunting"...revs going up and down. This may or not be related although I haven't heard it do this before. Maybe it's hunting as it tries to regulate the charge going to the battery? do not know History: Just under 114,000 miles. Reconditioned hybrid battery + new Yuasa 12V AGM battery installed April last year at 110,000 miles (hybrid battery is still under warranty). At that time, the installer said he removed the plug at the bottom of the 12V battery compartment as it was half-full of water. At first I though "aw crap, the hybrid battery's dead" but in the absence of other codes I'm wondering if it's a corroded fan connector. Anything else it could be? Hybrid battery ECU for example? As I said, I didn't have time on Friday afternoon to detailed troubleshooting, and I can't really go pulling the car apart in my mechanic's yard anyway I'm happy to let him do that. Thanks in advance for any suggestions/observations/pointers!
So now you have to pull the right hand rear quarter inner covering panel that wraps around just above the battery and that whole side piece It's not a very long process couple screws and there you will see the connector that always gets waterlogged It's hanging it's white it's right under the window just about and when you unplug it and look into the plug and look into the receptacle you'll see corrosion and brown nastiness more than likely If the pins look okay and they don't break when you touch them you might be able to clean them off with electrical contact cleaner spray from CRC or others If it breaks you can simply use an amp tool to pull the pins that are broken out cut the pins off and run a jumper wire jumping out the plug and receptacle You can see pictures of this right here on this site where people have done that If you want to carry that further you can buy the plug and go through all that certainly to me wouldn't be worth it to do all that I would just jump her out the wires go right over the plug and receptacle to the wires on the other side crimp them up if you wanted to go crazy you could wrap them properly and solder not sure what the point would be but some people that's necessary. And see what that yields that may put your fan off or only running when it's supposed to be when the fan normally runs a normal human could never hear it The car is running it's driving all of that The only time we get to hear the fan running is when that connector is bad or the hybrid battery is thrown a code that's so serious that it puts on the fan full time anytime the car is readying or attempting to do so that fan is on full tilt You're sitting there not moving in the fan is running full blast.
Or another way to hear it is you have tech stream And you go to the section where you test the fan and it allows you to put the fan on high. And then in another area you can make the fan come on anytime it comes on it goes right to full blast I haven't done any of this I left the fan at its factory settings but I have turned it on with the software just to hear it run. And then of course when my hybrid battery was failing I got to hear it run a whole lot like until I drove to the Toyota dealer to buy the new battery and swap it out in the parking lot It was running the whole time. At the time I swapped the battery I also fix the plug and receptacle for the fan which was showing corrosion.
Thanks. Yes this is what I'm thinking the problem could be given that water was getting in that area before, and I don't have any specific battery codes (yet). I RTV'd the joints at the top of the hatch last year but I'm thinking the entry point might have been the tail light all along. I'll get access to the connector and if it's corroded as you say, I think the best thing is to get rid of the connector entirely join the wires directly. Thanks for the sanity check
Me too. It's still under warranty but I'm working six days a week right now and don't need the hassle of taking it out and shipping it back
The battery fan running loudly is not a symptom... It's part of the warning light protocol. A P3000 error could mean 5 different things. In my experience the main reason is because corrosion has built up on the pins inside the hybrid battery ECU enough to cause tiny micro arcs between pins which gives the voltage sensor system bad readings and it throws this code. If it's still under warranty, they'll be familiar with this problem as its one of the most common ones there is, and they show up to swap the whole pack... If this happens for a pack out of warranty you replace the "Wire Frame No. 2" ($70) which is the voltage sensor harness and then you clean the pins of the ECU at the plug and where they get soldered to the circuit board on the inside. Sometimes you have to replace the ECU if damage is bad ($100 used on Ebay).
Thanks for the replies. After spending a bit more time on it today, block 14 is weak. I checked the fan connector...zero corrosion, it looks like new. Busted out the Autel and got: P3000 P3024 P0A80 C1259 C1310 The joys of refurbished batteries huh? At least I've got 5 weeks left on the warranty, so things could be worse...
So yeah after some discussion with the seller, the battery was reluctantly replaced under warranty. I was told that a condition of the warranty was that I was supposed to come back for a healthcheck after six months. I don't remember having that discussion when I bought the battery, but hey... Based on the experience, I'd be reluctant to recommend a refurbished battery to anybody unless they have the time and knowledge to swap cells in and out themselves. I reinstalled everything, double-checked my connections, and put the orange plug back in. Went to start the car...nothing...just an orange light on the start/stop button. Maybe it's forgotten the key? Found the other key and tried it...same. Borrowed my mechanic's Autel scanner and got a P3140 - HV interlock plug or inverter cover problem. Can't clear the code... Double-checked the orange plug, which was seated correctly. 30 seconds of Googling showed me I'm a moron When you push the plug handle home, you then have to push it down to lock. I forgot this in the two weeks since I took the battery out All good. For now...
