Bought Prius, Week Later all the Brake Codes, but A Few Questions

OP stated:

When I plugged it back in after, the codes where still there.

Do you have the codes? or do you mean just the lights? The best way to tell if you have an actuator problem is to just listen for it. Put the car in ready, press the brake a couple times and listen for the brake motor to run. Its just on the other side of the firewall, in front of the driver seat. Listen to it and learn what it sounds like. Stop pressing the brake and just listen. If you hear it turning on and off every several seconds, it's on its way out. I've seen Gen 2s continue to run for years, even with the pump doing this. I have a 144k mile 2007 that I've been driving every day for 2 months that cycles every 8 seconds. No codes, no problems, just runs often due to internal leakage in the actuator. Just haven't found the time to worry about it yet.

 

Yes have the same here exactly like the poster above runs right excessively but no codes no problems brake works great. The other three cars have all had the brake actuator replaced right here this one not so much they're getting hard to find update I just found a break actuator at LKQ and they gave it to me for like 50 bucks Not sure if it works but by the looks of the car possibly It's funny how most of these cars at LKQ have all their service records and stuff in the glove box which are now on the floor because that's what people do but I can sit there with these cars at LKQ and read through all their service records I have to pick them up off the floor put them in order by date plop them on the hood and read through them you'd be surprised at the stuff that's been replaced on a lot of these cars at LKQ they get down to the last part and say oh hell no and that last part would have been the last fix for 200 plus thousand It's just hail when you don't know.

 

Was this a Toyota dealership that sold it to you, did the "32 point inspection", and explained to you it was owned by an "elderly woman". How much was it?

You may have some legal recourse, if you're considering a refund: there's an expression "reasonable expectation" with sales, specifically: when you bought the car, you had a reasonable expectation it'd be functional for a while, not drop you in it within a week.

 

If you use the search function at the top of the screen, look for "flash codes". It describes a method to (carefully) jumper two terminals together on the OBD2 data link connector under the driver's dash. Do that and power the car on (power button twice without pressing brakes - all the warning lights should come on the dash).

Count which light flashes how many times and we can "translate" that into a normal code.

Another option is to get a scantool, here's a thread that reviews several apps and devices. Some are capable of reading codes and data on all systems on a Gen2 Prius.

Not entirely sure what's going on though, your friend's scanner should at least be able to talk to the engine ecu (ECM) via "global or generic" OBD2 mode.

https://priuschat.com/index.php?posts/3290690

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

Got a wiki page about that, which even explains several of the more common codes:

Blink (a/k/a Flash) Codes – How to. | PriusChat

 

A couple of Repair Manual excerpts:

 

Because after you stick something in the two holes, next you'll need to know how to turn what the lights are doing into trouble codes, and next you'll need to know how to find out what the codes are telling.

Without that, what did you think putting the thing in the holes would do for you?

Also, the wiki page has the pictures you're looking for. (It's just they might show up as red X right now because of a recent PriusChat server migration that didn't completely work. Those problems are getting slowly fixed.)

Yeah, best to stick with what you find in the Toyota repair manual, or well-vetted pages on PriusChat like the wiki pages here. Going elsewhere on the internet is a lot like getting your sex ed from the guys who hang on the street corner.

I can't quite see what Mendel posted (he put it on Google Drive, not seeing it here), but he normally posts straight from the repair manual, which says this (I just checked):



"Turn the power switch on (IG)" always means press it twice, foot off brake. If you press only once and no brake, that's a different mode called ACC. Not everybody knows this at first, but it counts as Prius basics worth learning.

 

I suppose you really don't need the rest of the blink-code page, if you just get other people to count the blinks!

 

In the video, you can see that the ((!)) and ABS and VSC lights are blinking patterns at you. Just have to focus on each light by itself and jot down the codes it is blinking. You know you're done with that light when you see it repeat and blink a code you already wrote down for it. Then you move to the next light and do the same. When you're done you have all the codes for each of the three lights.

If you don't see every light wrap around and repeat a code it had already blinked, you didn't record long enough.

 

It's no use trying to identify issues by having 'lights'. The lights only tell you there are trouble codes waiting to be read. There are a couple hundred of those. 200 different people could have 'lights' with no two of them having the same issue.

There is one trouble code, C1241, that is set when the voltage reaching the brake system is too low. That code, like every other brake trouble code, will turn on the 'lights'.

So if you have 'lights' and you read the trouble codes (which is what the 'lights' mean to do), and the code is C1241, then the 12 volt battery would be a prime suspect (though other problems in the power wiring from the battery to the brake electronics could also be at fault).

If the 'lights' are on because of some other codes, the likelihood of a battery explanation goes down, in favor of whatever else the actual codes are about.

Finding out what trouble codes your car is giving when your 'lights' are on is the best head start on finding out what's up.