Questions for the mad geniuses of PC... I've read here before that this is very common on older Prius'...My car seems to be VERY rough at times when the electric motor switches over to the gas engine. Progressively, it seems to have gotten worse over the past 6-8 months. Matter of fact, just yesterday I was on a call in the car and I actually thought that someone backed into me it was so harsh! Is this completely normal, or could it be indicative of problems that are afoot? Is there any (hopefully inexpensive) way to remedy this? Car drives fine, but asking for preventative reasons. P.S. - I've had the car back 9 days since my mechanic replaced the inverter pump, and no issues to speak of. Hallelujah! P.P.S. - If anyone's interested in playing Final Jeopardy - for my own knowledge - what makes that alarm clock ringing noise I hear when I step on the brake or after I shut the car?
The kind of alarm clock that sounds like a joy buzzer, or a rattlesnake? That's the pump for keeping up the brake fluid pressure.
If you step on the break and you're accumulator and pump or pump can't keep up the pressure in the accumulator then you get this continuous like a beeping noise that's coming from behind the CM monitor there's a speaker that's used to make the various bleeps and bloops one of my cars I've disabled the speaker so everything is quiet there's no noise for the seat belt nothing so you have to remember your P's and Q's in that car to buckle up and all that nonsense because they'll be no sound alerts at all It's perfectly quiet in the car at all times and I have the alarm turned off and all that so no lights go on in the parking lot to tell me where my car is hidden when I hit the remote all of that stuff because I know where it is and I don't like the beeps noises and all of that. But usually that continuous beat for the pushing the brake business will be accompanied by all the orange lights on the dash the! With the half circles beside it ABS VSC the brake light on the far left will be on etc so I don't think you're there and the clunking and the weirdness between engine and ice to me a lot of time seems to get worse when your battery is getting out of condition out of balance etc extremely old like 13 to 16 years it just doesn't have the ooomph anymore. And the balance between the gas engine and the electric motor becomes wider and so things tend to clunk switching between the two It's what it seems like to me I don't have any verification of this I know when one or two of my cars did this it was way more noticeable when my hybrid battery was more or less failing The minute I changed it even with a used one the clunks almost all went away That's the only way I know this is with the three cars that I've had all have had to have batteries and this was one thing that was noticeable when they needed that done
Typically it is caused by a misfire which causes a lack of sync between the engine and transaxle. Engine on misfires that clear up on a gen3 are often head gasket but this cause is rare on a gen2. You can keep the prize.
