starter battery problem

The 12v battery in the car is very small (used only to boot up the computer and run things when the car is off), and leaving a door or hatch not completely closed overnight could do it. All those interior lights draw enough power to draw down the 12V battery.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(newblue07 @ Aug 12 2007, 11:10 AM) [snapback]494291[/snapback]</div>

Ok Newblue07, I am going to have to assume you have never been around a Prius before and that you are not a troll. The reason I say this is because the Prius does not have a "starter."

You will have much to learn about driving a Prius. First it has an Internal Combustion engine, an electric motor; a large battery that runs’s the motor that is charged from the internal combustion engine, and from regenerative breaking. Finally you also have a small 12 volt accessory battery in the trunk.

The dealer should know what to look at. The 12 volt accessory plug will shut off when you shut off your car. You might not be powering down your car correctly, or you may be leaving your Key (FOB) too close to the car at night. If you do the car will use up all of its power trying talk to the key so to speak.

As far as gas mileage check what your tire air pressure is vs. what the recommended tire pressure is on the side of the tire. This should get you started on your way to better MPG's. There is still tons more to learn about your car, however there are many owners here at Priuschat willing to help you.

Welcome.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(newblue07 @ Aug 12 2007, 12:10 PM) [snapback]494291[/snapback]</div>

Take a look at this thread. Thanks to Hobbit:
http://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/cars/prius-12V/

The High Voltage Traction/Hybrid battery starts the ICE(gas engine) via MG1(which is inside the transmission.)

 

There are lots of posts on here identical to yours. You might have left a light on in the car. I usually recommend that you start carrying one of those self-contained battery jump starter units you can buy just about anywhere including Costco and Walmart for under $40. These can also pump up your tire if you get a flat so you don't have to change it and make it easy to maintain your tire pressure to whatever you use. You jump the 12v battery from under the hood, look at the owners manual for actual location. This, along with the previous posters info, should get you on your way.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(newblue07 @ Aug 12 2007, 11:10 AM) [snapback]494291[/snapback]</div>

Door or rear hatch not completely closed will drain the 12V battery. One way to catch this is to always lock the car. If anything is left ajar the car will give a long complaining beep.

 

I just bought a new 12 volt battery from the dealer where I bought the car from. I have never had a problem running the battery down. (knock on wood) But after reading so many posts on P-chat talking about dead batteries, I decided to buy a new one and replace it this month. Our 05 is just about 2 years old, and I don't want my wife to have any problems with the car when she drives alone.

I tested the battery right out of the huge frickin box it came in, and saw that it was at 12.7 volts. Perfect. I will probably do the swap real soon, and I hope to post pictures of the job when I'm done. I will probably place a small float charger on it before I do the swap just to be sure.

An interesting note about the person at the parts counter at Longo. When I asked for a replacement 12V battery for the 05 Prius, he asked whether I had the SKS (smart key system), which I do, and he said OK, I'll be right back. Apparently the parts catalog lists two batteries as replacements. The one for the SKS equipped car apparently has a little more CCA (cold cranking amps) than the batteries used in all other Prii.

Good luck with your car.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(newblue07 @ Aug 12 2007, 12:36 PM) [snapback]494323[/snapback]</div>

Well my 2005's aux battery just failed for the second time in a week. I read this thread and dug into the trunk to check my battery. No CCA listing on it that I could decipher, but I have a slight bulge in the battery on the right and left sides. Needless to say - the battery will be replaced after work tomorrow.

Thank you to whomever posted the connection to the pictures of the battery. That made the task of peeking much simpler!

I think that the smart key system is the likely culprit for wearing the battery down. I am spoiled so I will get the best battery that fits!

I still love the Prius - 50.6 overall mileage at 34 thousand miles and it is a great car to drive!

Thank you again everyone!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(wile-e @ Aug 12 2007, 10:34 PM) [snapback]494498[/snapback]</div>

Not unless you left the car without running it for at least two weeks and left the SKS turned on. Otherwise it was something else (door or hatch left ajar, incorrectly installed aftermarket electronics, etc.).

 

Also from experience....the car will not lock if something is not closed properly. So, its a good idea to always lock the car.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(AOV @ Aug 13 2007, 09:40 AM) [snapback]494672[/snapback]</div>

I always lock my cars. Too many years of living in the southwest druggie corridor to ever leave anything unlocked.

But the plot now thickens. I looked at various batteries and decided to see what Toyota had in the way of batteries. In talking with the parts guy I discovered that the battery is covered under the 36 month 36000 mile warranty. Well it just so happens that I have a few thousand miles to go and two months before I hit the magic 36 so I made an appointment and took it in to the Vancouver Washington Toyota dealer.
http://www.vancouvertoyota.com/
I scheduled the 30,000 mile service at the same time.

I dropped it off at 7:30 this morning and got called at 5:00. I was finally free to call back at 5:45 and got told that I had jumped the car incorrectly and burned the fusible link and destroyed the fuse box.

Well the only problem with the 'jumping the car incorrectly' theory is that if I had crossed the connections I would have to change them back before I could get the car to run. Yet I have never done anything other then pop the fuse box, pop the positive connector lid connect the positive red cable to the exposed connector, connected the negative black connector to the point shown in the handy picture in the quick guide and started the car with nary a problem!

As I pointed out to the service advisor I drove to the dealership with no problems, no popped fuses and they started and drove the car into the shop. If I burned up the fusible link and fuse box, I doubt that it would have gone unnoticed since I drove in the dark with all lights working, every possible power item on the car got used at some point because I was checking to see if something had possibly burned out.

He told me that some strong vehicles can burn the fusible link as well. I pointed out that I was using a battery pack. He offered me a great deal on tires...

My personal theory is that in the 8 and one half hours that they were working on the car (quoting the service writer.) some nimrod hooked up a cable wrong and blew everything up.

They are telling me that it will cost 725 for this little job. I will be disputing that. Especially since the service writer seemed more interested in selling me new tires than telling me what was wrong with the car.

To add insult to insult when I asked about a loaner car I got told that 'they close at 6:00'. To say I am not happy is a mild understatement. The fusible link and fuse box were fine when I took the car in. Ham handed mechanics are the cause of this problem.

I will be looking for another local Toyota dealer for the rest of my service contract no matter how this works out. I wasn't too happy when they kept 'accidentally' charging me for the synthetic oil that I brought in for oil changes. Now I am far past that point.

I will pass on updates as I have them. Hopefully I won't be stuck until my wife gets off of work at 9:00 at that time.

 

[deleted]

 

Just an update. The Service Writer had apparently not ordered the parts until this morning. So I am without my car for another day. He never gave me a reason for the delay in ordering.

I have called Toyota customer care to get them involved. They then passed it on to the 'Hybrid Motor Group' to evaluate.

But I do have a loaner! An '08 Corolla. Nice car but now I remember why I didn't care for automatics until I got the Prius with a CVT. You are either accelerating or decelerating, there is no middle ground. I miss that smooth CVT....

 

Hi wile-e, welcome to PriusChat. I bought my 2005 from McCord's Vancouver Toyota and took it back to them for the steering recall. They completely screwed up the job and didn't follow Toyota's very explicit directions; the tech said "We don't have to." Then they washed the car to play nice and left it covered with big white water marks. I stay away from them now, too.

Come to Joe's Crab Shack this Saturday! Check my sig for the local HSD/Prius meetup group.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(wile-e @ Aug 16 2007, 12:12 AM) [snapback]496723[/snapback]</div>

Stay on thier case, do not let them get away with this kind of treatment. Go thru thier chain and on up to Toyota Headquarters. They have some incredibly lazy people there. I don't believe that Toyota wants any of thier customers treated that way. I had to push a bit to get a aux bat changed, but it definitely made a difference. The dealership was either too lazy, or not equipped to test the aux bat adequately. They provided me a new Bat for customer relations. Car was about three months old. BTW I believe that when you attempt to hook a battery in backwards, that is: plus to ground, you get sparks, hot wires and burned contacts.......... and other disasters.

 

Repeating for emphasis:

It is not a big deal to jump-start a Prius from any external external 12 volt source.

HOWEVER you must be ABSOLUTELY certain not to connect the polarity backwards. The consequences for getting it wrong range from about $50 to over $1000, and will almost always leave the car inoperative until it can be repaired.

For a small additional cost, Prius could have been manufactured with protection against reverse-jumping. But it was not. Therefore, it falls to us to make sure that this small task gets performed correctly.

 

I just replaced my 12 volt battery on my 2005 Prius. Even though I had no problems with the existing one, I chose to buy a new one from the dealer. Total time to swap out the existing battery with the new one was 15 minutes. I decided not to take pictures afterall.

Using a voltmeter to check the voltages before and after resulted in the following.

New Battery out of the box was 12.7 volts. The new battery was left on a float charger for 24 hours before I swapped them out. New battery voltage after float charger was the same.

The voltage on the existing battery was 12.9 volts when I checked it after it was disconnected from the vehicle.

I sprayed some battery terminal protection on both posts and connectors prior to re-connecting them. I also painted the PLUS AND NEGATIVE terminals white with some body paint just to make them easier to see. I also did this to the original battery upon removing it. The original battery will now live in my ham radio shack for disaster preparedness in the ham radio jump kit. I will most likely keep this battery on a float charger to maintain the level above 12.3 (below 12.3 volts and batteries start to sulfate producing crystals on the lead plates ) I made sure that I did not accidentally ground out the positive terminal of the new battery while reconnecting it with the wrench that I was using. This is easy to do because you could swing it around while tightening and the handle of the wrench could touch a metal piece of the car and fry something important. Heads up if you decide to do this yourself, be cautious and read the owners manual.

When I reconnected the negative terminal to the body of the vehicle, there was a spark, but I don't think anything was wrong. I checked the owners manual and followed directions to remove the negative terminal first, and to reinstall it last. Then I reconnected the vent tube to the side of the battery. Then I booted up in IG on mode (one press of the power button) and confirmed that the Neutral position was selectable before I powered up to ready mode with my foot on the brake. I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. No problems so far. I will add some observations if anything strange occurrs next week on our commute to and from work.

After putting everything back together, and driving for 10 miles down the freeway, I noticed that I lost my radio and satellite presets. The outside air temperature also displayed celcius instead of fahrenheit, but soon reset itself to fahrenheit. The gas gauge showed that I had about a quarter tank, but the average mileage display had reset itself. So I guess I lost all of of my lifetime mileage figures? I drove to the gas station and filled it up with 7 1/2 gallons ($2.65 p/gallon at Costco Southern California) and the gauge soon reset itself to full and I managed 99 miles per gallon on the 3 mile drive home, mostly downhill. So far so good.

I chose to swap out a perfectly good battery just to possibly avoid any problems later on down the road, especially when my wife is driving alone. It's a win win for me, because now I have a good battery for my ham shack that is small and light, and can power ham radios in the field. Of course I have mentioned to my wife that a new battery can still die if a door is left ajar or lights are accidentally left on.

After driving about ten miles and then checking the battery voltage of the new battery, it is sitting at 12.8 volts. I assume that it will be brought back to 12.9 with normal driving next week.

Good luck to anyone trying this on their own. I only needed a 10mm socket and extension to do everything.

Now if I could only install the PCV valve I bought a while ago. I'm at 67K miles on a two year old prius. So far so good, wish us luck on the next 67K miles.

 

HDX, for our readers I will say that loss of radio presets is hard to avoid with a battery swap. The oF to oC thing is...interesting.

A moderate spark on re-establishing the 12 volt system is expected. Quite different from the 'reverse-jumping' show-stopper.

Replacing the PCV valve requires 'moderate disassembly'! Just sit on that for a while (you are early); or maybe search for instructions here or in the yahoo Prius technical group.

 

I don't have anything specifically on the PCV but at some point I
had mine out for inspection. Not difficult, but the cowl does have
to come out to get access to the area. If you look at how the wiring
in http://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/cars/heat...s/147region.jpg
sort of turns a corner over the rear-drivers corner of the engine,
it's under there. It's relatively easy to undo the three bolts
holding that whole mess down, unclip the black plastic box around
it, and bend that right-angle corner of harness up and away from
the PCV screwed into the rearward valve-cover "hump" underneath.
.
_H*