2001 shuttering to start, won't move in drive.

can you take a VOM meter and give us a voltage reading on the 12v battery please. Both key off and key on with headlites.

 

After the power train has cooled down, are you able to drive the car at all?

Your 12V battery is on the low side and it would not hurt to charge it fully. However that is not the cause of your car's problems.

The hybrid vehicle warning icon has appeared in the MFD and that is a serious warning. If the car cannot be driven the good news is that it shouldn't cost much to tow it 3 miles.

 

Without trouble codes it is hard to say much. The problem could be a failed inverter or transaxle.

 

I would say "impossible." There are three primary and three support computers that operate the car. They are very good about saving the error codes BUT it takes a Prius-aware scanner. The reason is several, non-related errors can give exactly the same symptoms.

The Prius control computers hold the answers and need a Prius aware scanner to get the full error codes. Read the stickies and we'll be happy to explain what seems confusing. But writing or making videos is not reading the control computers and that is what is needed to go further. . . . Or tow it to someone who will read the Prius control computer codes.

Bob Wilson

 

There's a check-engine light as well as the hybrid warning lights. There could be engine codes in the ECM ... any old scanner will read those, which might shed some light even before we can query the rest of the computers. A misfiring engine can shake, rattle, and roll like that. The car is complicated but the problem doesn't have to be.

-Chap

p.s. When I was home on vacation during college I once got a call out of the blue from a classmate and her brother who were on a cross-country drive when their old VW Bug engine started shaking like things were about to fly off. They looked on a map and the student directory (it listed home #s then), figured out they were near me, and called. The Bug looked and sounded so apocalyptic when I saw it that I was spooked out of even trying to diagnose it. We drove a slow funereal caravan down to the nearest "VW specialist" where it was purring like a kitten after about ten minutes changing breaker points and plug wires. I felt a bit silly for not having checked those myself....

 

The ScanGaugeII will read the engine codes out-of-the-box (as will pretty much any OBD-II scanner), and it will also let you read the codes from the hybrid-vehicle and traction-battery ECUs, which is important because there's no alternate way to read those and in your situation you probably have some. However, in order to make it read those codes, you'll have to look up and enter the correct 'XGAUGE' definitions for them, using the four buttons on the front of the ScanGaugeII in a tedious process that's like texting somebody a long string of letters and numbers from a flip-phone.

The ScanGaugeII will not read (or even detect) other computers in the car like the brake, airbag, steering, body, or climate controllers, but that's less of a limitation because all of those have alternate readout methods where you can enter a test mode and count light blinks.

The Toyota Techstream software, of course, will conveniently show everything.

-Chap

 

I forgot to mention, sometimes the ScanGaugeII is a little unreliable reading the engine codes also, because it doesn't address the engine ECU directly - it sends a generic message saying 'send me codes!' and if the hybrid or battery ECU responds first, you might see codes from them (which you weren't even expecting) instead of the engine codes you were expecting.

To get around that, I think there's now an XGAUGE definition to use for getting specifically the engine codes by specifically asking the engine controller. So it's not a problem you can't get around, but it can be surprising.

-Chap

 

They don't even know such things are there. It might be possible that some of them (as I just described for the ScanGaugeII) might accidentally show a battery or HV response when expecting engine codes, but you can't count on it, and all the other information you might want to retrieve from those ECUs will be totally inaccessible.

Some auto parts stores have the ScanGaugeII in stock, if you were willing to pay a few dollars more and not wait for shipping.

-Chap

 

I have some other errands to run today but folks will be around able to help. Start with this thread and some of the links:
AE Pig-tail and code flasher | PriusChat

Working with our collaborators and the moderators, we've tried to keep the "stickies" current and accurate. If there are problems, the good 'ole boys who post will have the answers or at least good suggestions.

Bob Wilson

 

For the sort of central collection that's on sourceforge so it can be kept updated, check here. You should see links to the NHW11 (2001-2003 Prius) database, and also a couple of 'exporters'. You can download the database, and download the XGauge exporter (look for the 'download this file' link at the top).

The 'database' is kind of a scary name for a plain XML file that holds enough information on reading the Prius data so it can be exported to different formats as used by ScanGauge, Torque, etc. If you run the XGauge exporter on that file, it makes you a file that looks like a bbcode table (as PriusChat would use) containing the digits you'd enter for XGAUGEs. If your computer has Java (or you can download it), and you have downloaded Saxon-B from here (scroll down to "Older Products"), that's all you need to run the exporter. Some day I should really just make it work via the web, it wouldn't be that hard.

I think Vincent put a preformatted-for-XGAUGE version in a google doc here. I think there was once a table in the thread Bob linked, but since one of the upgrades to PriusChat's software it has stopped displaying properly as a table so it's really hard to read.

One thing I had forgotten (but remembered reading the NHW11 database page), is that your ScanGaugeII will come out of the box with a cable that doesn't work right in a Gen 1. There are 8 wires in the cable and two need to be cut (because they aren't needed to communicate with a Gen 1, and the Gen 1 uses those two pins for other purposes having to do with steering, brake, and airbag diagnosis, so pretty goofy things happen when you plug in a ScanGauge that sends signals on them.

The ScanGauge people (Linear Logic) will send you a working cable at no charge if you contact them and ask, but if you have just bought a ScanGauge and are itching to use it, you might want to mod the cable it came with instead of waiting.

What I did was I just left the cable stock, but built an adapter for the end. One end of the cable has an RJ45 plug (same as Ethernet cables), so all I did was buy an Ethernet cable and chop one end off, and buy a punch-down style RJ45 socket, and punch down six of the eight wires from the cut cable end, leaving the two others unconnected. Then I could just plug this little adapter into the ScanGauge, and plug the original ScanGauge cable into it, and it all worked fine in the Gen 1. (Later when my free correct cable arrived from Linear Logic, I swapped it in for my homebrew version, for improved aesthetics....)

-Chap

 

Mini VCI is much better than ScanGauge and costs less, but requires a Windows XP or Windows 7, 32 bit OS laptop.

 

As I suspected. P0301 - cylinder 1 misfiring. P0302 - cylinder 2 misfiring. P0300 - misfires detected in multiple (or random) cylinders.

You really should run your Prius on more than two cylinders. It will get better mileage, and vibrate less.
Seriously, two cylinders misfiring may mean that nearly half of the fuel being injected travels unburned down into the catalytic converter, raising temperatures there. Fixing a misfire quickly may save you the cost of converter replacement.

The P3190 and P3191 are just big-picture codes indicating the engine is producing reduced power, or has failed to start. Misfiring on two cylinders would cause that.

Your mechanic might be anxious about touching a Prius, but this isn't about anything but running down the usual-suspect misfire causes on a fuel-injected, distributorless ignition, four cylinder gasoline engine....

-Chap