All Fuel Level bars flashing. No check engine, no triangle, no start

Has the car run out of petrol? I ask because it isn't possible to drain the battery driving it on just the battery, and the NWH11 doesnt even have an EV button;

However your HV battery may be drained if the engine cut out and it was then driven on battery?

 

I think what landspeed was saying is the engine normally won't stop running if the battery needs charge. Of course if there was an engine problem that already prevented it starting.

You probably knew this question was coming: what are you doing to get the trouble codes?

 

The P3106 has 4 subcodes. Does your scanner give you those?

 

Seems to be a common complication of cat theft.

 

I had this happen once when I ran out of gas and drained the high voltage battery trying to getting to the gas station. The car was dead it wouldn’t even start when AAA got there.
I charged the 12 volt (it didn’t need it but what the hell) over night, reset the codes in the morning and it started (a little rough, but started, and then seemed to be fine


iPhone ?

 

Thanks for the post! I was able to solve my issue with your troubleshooting. Not the IGN fuse but the EFI. Attached pictures. CAT theft problem + Dangling O2 sensor = Instant fuse short. A year later problem solved (Many more life priorities and not urgent) but car runs. Thanks again!

Posted in my original forum post as well.

2001 Prius Won't Start | PriusChat

 

I can only see 8 15 Amp fuses: EFI, AM2, DOME, THRO, M-HTR, CIG, WASHER and STOP, but no the IGN you mentioned. Where is it located?

 

Did you look at the attached pictures? You can't miss it---circled, yet!

 

Do you mean the pictures in post #10?

They appear to reference the EFI fuse.

 

Right you are, dolj. Brain fart---sorry about that!

 

I'm not refering to your post. Did you mentioned the IGN fuse? I guess not....

 

I was driving on a neighborhood street, a normal day, without cold, heat, rain or snow, and the vehicle stopped. First time something like this has happened to me. There was a slight smell of burning. Tried to start it again and nothing. No ready, no gear position indication, intermittent fuel gauge (I knew positively that the tank was almost full), no red triangle, no alarm, nothing.

I disconnected the 12 V battery and reconnected it after 5 minutes, I even disconnected the main battery, and nothing, everything was the same.

I tried looking for information here and it was the most frustrating thing that has ever happened to me.

The next day I started checking the fuses one by one until I found the AM2 15 Amp fuse blown. This fuse, in addition to powering the inverter's coolant pump, powers a good part of the computers when the car starts up.

Luckily for me, the replacement fuse I had was 20A, so I put it in and it allowed me to see smoke coming out of the area where the inverter coolant pump is. So far I did not know if it was the pump or some wiring. The 20A fuse held without blowing.

I began to disassemble everything necessary to be able to extract the pump and when I was able to get to it I saw that there were ashes in its lower part. Here is the culprit. I electrically disconnected the pump, put the vehicle on and everything went back to normal. I even started it for a few seconds to check that no other fault appeared and the car started without problems and without indicating any fault.

Before that, I used Techstream to try to identify the problem, but without any luck, because most of the computers were out.

Now I'm waiting for the pump to arrive, to change it and solve my problem.

 

At some effort to keep a thread from becoming about two different things, what you've just described is a somewhat common situation in Gen 2, where the inverter cooling pump fails and takes the AM2 fuse with it, but this might be the first time I've seen it reported for Gen 1. More about that can be found here in the other thread where you posted about it. That includes pictures locating the AM2 fuse. (Gen 2 has a connector you can easily disconnect to avoid blowing it again while your replacement pump ships, but no such luck in Gen 1.)

This thread was about problems following the theft of a catalytic converter. Thieves cut or rip apart the wires to the heated oxygen sensor, and if the heater supply wire shorts, it blows a different fuse, the EFI fuse. (Not the IGN fuse; that was a bit of a red herring. There is an ECU-IG fuse, but it's in the fuse box inside the cabin, and mostly supplies power to ECUs.)

[Edited: the pump-blows-AM2 issue is so common in Gen 2 that I totally missed the post was about a Gen 1. Might be the first time that problem's been reported in a Gen 1!]

 

Who is "you" in your post ? And why are you posting about the Gen 2 when the post is about the Gen 1 Prius? Pics wont never match.

 

Oh, good catch, sorry. The pump-eats-AM2 issue is so well-known in Gen 2 that as soon as I saw it, I was just sure that was what car you had. Maybe you've been the lucky first person to have the same issue in a Gen 1.

I've edited the post.

 

I dont think so, because there's a bunch of people (on other thread), that described the same problem, BUT NO ONE POSTED THE SOLUTION.