2002 Prius P3125 P3130

welcome!
if there is movement in the coolant, the pump is fine. you may have a bad inverter, according to google

 

I would love to know any updates on your car's issue, as mine has similar symptoms.

I've had the power steering warning indicator come on several times in the past year. My local Toyota dealership was unable to find any problems, and since the indicator would go away after restarting they said I could ignore it. Yesterday the indicator came on again, and while I was driving shortly afterwards the following happened:

* Main display started flickering between a blank (but backlit) display and the regular display.
* The little square around the D disappeared
* Car lost motive power.
* Check engine indicators came on.

About half an hour before that I had noticed that the AC didn't seem to be working as effectively as usual, and made a mental note to get that checked out.

I turned off the car, restarted, and the same thing happened after about 30 seconds - car went out of gear, stopped moving, display began flickering.

I got my OBD scanner out of the trunk and it came up with codes P3130 and P3125.

Turned off the car for about five minutes, restarted it, and was able to drive for about two minutes before it cut out again. At this point I called AAA and my husband. AAA took my car to the dealership, and my husband took me home. The service center won't open until tomorrow morning, and I'll be calling them first thing.

In the meantime I've been googling like crazy and found your post. If you have any other information to share I'd love to hear it!

Cheers,
Elizabeth

 

I've owned one of these for almost a year and I'm honestly not sure why people like them so much. It's like owning a house of cards in an area prone to a stiff breeze. They are funny looking too. And weigh about as much as my dog. And I do recall being thoroughly unimpressed when they first came out. I was driving a manual '91 Escort hatchback at the time and getting very near 40mpg highway. There were other very simple early 90s cars pushing 40+mpg like the Civic hatchbacks as well. And Toyota had 10 years of tech development, added a whole electric assist system and multiplied the complexity of the systems by 100 fold - at least - and was bragging about adding another 5mpg? Pretty lame if you ask me. With the extra complexity came the falling ability to easily diagnose things, compounded by keeping most of the info locked up under the super-secret dealer only software. Frankly, I find the whole thing to be a very large joke.

Rant over.

I don't have my "Prius PhD" yet, so it's likely that I'm talking out my ear hole, but your symptoms are all over the map and shouldn't be related to one another. (Power steering issues, flickering displays, loss of power, multiple dash lights). So this points to a root - like a problem with the 12V auxiliary battery, for example. It's already been towed to the dealer so whatever (find a local, independent shop that works on Prius instead). But you need to know what the 12V system is doing before anything else.

 

actually, since gen2 came along, very few people like gen 1. just weirdo's, oddball's and hard core romantic diy'ers

 

Can't tell why anyone likes the Gen 2's either. They're even more bizarre looking. A day in the future will come when people look back on the entire Prius "thing" and think "WTH were they even thinking". The day is soon.

That is, unless Toyota allows Techstream to operate with full functions through the dash. As far as I'm concerned, it should be illegal not to. This would be a game changer.

 

Well I guess I am weird, a bit of an oddball and like doing things myself....

 

Please help me with my 2001 Prius.
Yesterday was literally the hottest day in the history of Portland, OR. I was waiting in the parked car with the AC on. I finally thought to myself that it could be overheating, so I turned it for 10 or 15 minutes. But apparently I rested it NOT soon enough. When I did restart the triangle of death came on. I gently drove the car 4 miles home and there there did not seem to be performance issues, etc. It drove fine. The next morning the light is still on, and I looked at the codes.

I got codes P1436, P3125, P3130, P 3190 and an impending P0304.

Some history: the car has 255,000 miles on it. The inverter fluid and oil were changed 10 weeks ago (which was 3000 miles ago prior to a road trip to Utah). The power battery was replaced by OEM at 191,000. One of these codes (P1436?) is due to the replacement of catalytic converter (stolen) with a CAT with the wrong (or no) connection for O2 sensor; that's another issue for another thread.

I started the car and checked the inverter reservoir - Yes, the fluid is gently rolling and looks clean, etc.

What do I look at or try next?

Thank you PriusChat for helping me to understand and make best use of my wheels,
John
Portland , OR