Interesting Electric problems

2006 Prius, with quite a few irregularities.
The car is salvaged (front collision) and with the exception of very minor irregularities on the lighting, all was working well until about 4 weeks ago.
Irregularities on the lighting are not installing the HID lights (installed regular Halogen lights instead) and some wiring problems where the high beams came on as soon as you turned the lights on, but only switching to running daylights turned on the low beams.
4 weeks ago, the red triangle + the warning for HID Autoleveling problems appeared in the MFD. Oh well, whatever; until 2 weeks later the lights stayed off when leaving a game at night. To get home, I had a mechanic hotwire the lights so they run as soon as you turn the car on, high-beam does not work anymore (low beam is better then no beam).
So far so good, but then the FOB started acting funny. It's a SKS, but it does not lock/unlock the doors anymore. It does work for starting the car without sliding the FOB into the key, and complains when you walk away from the car.
Other problem is a rapidly draining battery. Not driving the car for 2 days is dangerous, dead battery usually.
MPG display works, with the exception that it does not show the last 30 minutes (sometimes it shows a 100 mgp bar, but most the time all 6 intervals are blank).
I did try some stuff like disconnecting the battery and the "Master Reboot" as described by Craig Van Batenburg from ACDC WEb Site. I have connected an amp meter to investigate the draining battery and it appears that it draws around 350 mA at all times. The only way to reduce that is pull out the 2 ECU fuses below the steering wheel. Removing a lot of the fuses (don't ask ) will drop the current to about 80 mA, but there seems to be no way below that.
I have tried 2 Toyota dealers has resulted in nothing but cost. The first basically said "Sorry, and good luck", the 2nd may not have done anything besides getting to the system diagnosis screen, reading a series of error codes and decided to not attempt any more (I did tell them of the problems the first dealer had).

I've done some research and some of the things I can rule out are:

• Smart button below the steering wheel is not disengaged
• FOB battery is not dead

One thought I've had was to start my own repair shop. Nobody seems to know just what to do, so I might as well start experimenting with my BIG toy (=Prius). My start was going to be figuring out the apparent initial problem, the problem with the HID Auto leveler. I've checked the level device at the rear axle and the resistance seems OK (7 - 13 ohms). But, with the car running, I can not measure any voltage drop across the 3 leads that come out by the rear axle measuring device. So my first question with that is: Where is the HID Autolevel ECU in the car so I can check for loose connections.

That was long, let's see what suggestions the great people of this forum can make.
Thanks in advance,
Joe

 

Thank you! Next question based on the diagram:
Step 5 talks about initialization based on page IN-34? What documents is this referring to? Are they available short of asking the dealer?

Joe

 

DogFriend,
I don't have a manual (salvage came with nothing but a key). Where can I aquire a manual and do you have a good source for getting/buying a repair manual? I see that your AutoLevel instructions talk about removing ECU (See page ES-492).

Thanks

 

Well, my wonder car definetly draws a whole lot more. My amp meter quites at 250 mA, but it never gets even close to anything below (the needle is stuck against the right end, I've installed a 5A fuse instead of the .5A to check for more then 5 seconds before the fuse burns out).
I have identified that pulling the dome light fuse out allows the current to drop to around 60 mA after a few minutes.
New twist: The power windows stay enabled at all times now, some people pay for this, I'd love to get rid of it. Other new features are a SKS key that get's polled for even if the Smart key is off. Anybody can top that?
Till Next Time,
Joe