Prius randomly loses power, slippage light often illuminates

Discussion in 'Gen 2 Prius Care, Maintenance and Troubleshooting' started by MountWeasel, Aug 4, 2024.

  1. MountWeasel

    MountWeasel Junior Member

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    Daughter has a 2006 Prius 240k miles. Car intermittently loses power to the point of not being able to maintain highway speeds. The slipping light (traction control) will often light, but not always. No codes on scanner, and I haven’t been able to duplicate the problem when I’m driving. Tires are a matched set that I bought new about 1 year ago. My first thought is a failing wheel speed sensor causing it to go into traction control reduced power mode. Is there a way to verify this? I’ve seen videos about disabling traction control by pressing the gas pedal twice, putting it in neutral, gas pedal twice, then back to park, putting the car into diag mode. But I’ve also heard you don’t want to drive it very long in this mode. Any help or direction would be greatly appreciated.
     
    #1 MountWeasel, Aug 4, 2024
  2. Tombukt2

    Tombukt2 Senior Member

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    Seems like it would be that or the wiring too The traction control computer or that computer If you know you don't have a mismatch set of tires then the next thing I would be looking at is wheel sensors and/or their pickups or in this case there tone ring any of them are chipped or messed up that can cause a problem similar.
     
    #2 Tombukt2, Aug 4, 2024
  3. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    Sometimes the quickest way to troubleshoot a situation like this is to use Techstream or a comparable scan tool to pull up the "ABS History".

    It will show the most recent four times the ABS or traction control got triggered, and everything the ECU thought was happening at the time: wheel speeds, steering angle, vehicle speed and g forces, yaw rate, etc.

    If one of those inputs was in some way wrong, leading the ECU to think a skid was in progress, the wrong input will often be easy to spot.
     
    #3 ChapmanF, Aug 4, 2024
    douglasjre, MountWeasel and Brian1954 like this.
  4. MountWeasel

    MountWeasel Junior Member

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    Don’t have tech stream, can I get the same info from dr Prius.
     
    #4 MountWeasel, Aug 4, 2024
  5. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    That would surprise me ... Dr. Prius is sort of known for being able to show some engine trouble codes, some battery trouble codes, some information that is generally battery-related, and have a bunch of special features and screens that are meant for evaluating the traction battery ... but otherwise not being able to do much of what a capable scan tool would.

    There are other choices that have been reviewed in this thread:

    Gen2 OBD2 app review | PriusChat
     
    #5 ChapmanF, Aug 4, 2024
  6. dolj

    dolj Senior Member

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    ^^^ This.
     
    #6 dolj, Aug 4, 2024
  7. douglasjre

    douglasjre Senior Member

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    What u don't see when pulling codes w the wrong scanner is what would scare me from relying on the misinformation at hand
     
    #7 douglasjre, Aug 5, 2024
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