New disabling symptom on 2007 w/85,000 miles

i barely drive my car, i got it preowned in 2009 january, i used to drive a lot on my job and got paid for mileage. I retired in 2013 and no longer drive unless necessary. i realize that's not good for the car. So, i need to start from here.

i'm in the San Fernando Valley in LA.

i went to the car this morning to start it, it seemed to start normally, quickly, and all the lights were on the displays. i noticed the red triangle which i saw the last time i started it or the last one i remember, and it quickly went away while all the normal lights were there so i thought it was just part of the normal start up. i noticed there was that little orange light that after looking in the manual is called Malfunction Indicator Lamp. the motor wasn't on, all the other lights went off and just that small orange lamp with the word Check next to it remained. That light eventually went away. It's dead.

i would like to find out if this sounds like any particular known things it could possibly be.

 

Thanks. I am unknowledgeable and unskilled mechanically. i have AutoClub road service . i think they can check the 12V. i've had dead batteries recently, at least twice and they came out and just charged the under the hood battery and i had to drive around and go on the freeway for up to an hour. One of those times, the Malfunction indicator light went on. After AutoClub it was running but i was afraid it was something worse and i went to a mechanic i've never been to before but he thought it would be ok just from charging it (this was about a month and a half ago).

Since i don't have near by mechanic i stayed and talked to him for a long time to get a feel for him, nice guy for sure, i haven't had a trustworthy nearby mechanic in a long time, so i would trust this guy but what i don't know his Prius experience, it's a japanese car mechanic, but who knows how many older Priuses they work on.

i had a couple of problems with the car in 2019, and after visiting Prius Chat i took it to Avi at Hybrid Fix and would go to him in a heartbeat but too far from me for something simple. If it needs major repairs i'll go to him so i want to find out. i had first taken it to a mechanic near me, they seemed both unknowledgeable and untrustworthy, they have me an estimate of $10,000 to $4000 for the bare minimum. Because the sleazy fake mechanic had erased all the codes, and it wasn't showing the problem at the time of that visit to Avi, there was nothing that could really be done, though he spent a long time on the other problem i was having.

So i'm going to have AutoClub come out now and check the 12V, it's been a while since i got a new one.

i have a rental car reserved to go and pick up, i hope the car works after AutoClub and i can cancel that car. thanks again!

 

Thanks for the bad news. i am mentally prepared to replace the hybrid battery if i have to, maybe a used one, and take really good care of it.

Do you mean if the 12V is worn out, it won't help to get a new one? If the volt meter shows at the front point that it's dead, is that fatal to the whole car?

 

thanks for hybrid battery link/information.

Yes the orange light is in the owners manual, it shows an illustration of the Instrument Cluster, and the Multi-information display (overview). The orange light i was seeing is in the instrument cluster to the right, it looks like a little engine with the word CHECK under it. In the manual under malfunction indicator, it says 'there is a problem somewhere in the engine, hybrid system, throttle control system or warning light system itself.'

my 12V battery invoice shows it was bought in May 2014.

AutoClub came and hooked up their device to the front area and he got in the car and started it himself. i asked if he would check the 12V battery voltage. He wasn't really answering the question. He said the car needed to charge for 45 minutes, he said, and i had never heard this before, that could leave it in my closed garage and it would charge with the engine off. He was saying because it's a hybrid, the key is in it and it started up, all the instrument lights came on etc, but it shuts the engine off to save gas and that meant i won't get exhaust fumes in my garage too much. i said the other guys always told me i had to drive it around and i asked about the exhaust fumes, he said no, i could just leave it to charge in the garage, because it's a hybrid, He said "If you want to go out and drive around, suit yourself." I had a hard time understanding him, just because i never heard of those things before. Right now the car is idling in the garage, or if it's not called idling, then it's charging itself in the garage.

i am supposed to pick up my rental car now, but i think they're open another hour. i want to wait and see if my car starts before canceling it. i think it will start because i think this is like what happened in December, with that same orange light.

The AutoClub guy had some problem with checking the 12V voltage, i'm not sure what was going on. maybe he did check it, but at one point he said impatiently "would you stop saying 12 volt!" He didn't want me to say it. He said "the charging system is fine." He asked how old my 12V is and i said i would have to look at the invoice and i said it was pretty old. He started to go in the back where the 12V battery is but then changed his mind. this was not the easiest to understand communication, then he said i should check the invoice and see what it tells me to do (English was not the first language for him, maybe that was part of my understanding problem?), and he was saying i should do that later, not then because he was done and he was leaving. I asked if he would just check the 12V battery voltage while he was here and he said i should check the invoice. He said if you check it later and it's too old, we can come back, just call us. my brain was pretty fried and i let him go not remembering that every time they come out i have to pay $90 because i used up my 4 free ones for the year. Anyway, i found the invoice and it says it's almost 6 years old. no idea what the voltage is. i might have to call them again. i'm going to go check if the battery is charged now (he did tell me to run it every 3 days or so from now on).

 

thanks -- i checked the invoice on the 12V, it was bought in May of 2014 so i'll take it to Toyota tomorrow and get a new one.

The garage did smell like exhaust when i just went out to check if it turns back on, but mildly, not as much as it would be the engine was making exhaust the whole time. The car started up OK. So if 12V is not holding a charge, it may hold for a day or more but what happened today will keep happening? It's been 2 weeks since the last time i got it charged.

If i get a new one from Toyota, i would like to make sure it's fully charged. Should the service record show what the charge on it is?

i also want to get a record of what the charge is on the current battery that i'm replacing.

 

Thanks -- i appreciate your emphasizing that! The room i was in is just across the patio from the garage inner door, and i thought after a while my eyes were burning a little.

 

Thanks to all you guys for sharing info and help with my mechanical illiteracy and disorientation. Before i got the first reply here, i was immediately ready to have my car towed to a new mechanic who i hoped would know what he was doing, i wanted to get started on having whatever major repair it needed, due to desperation for a working car. Now, i am ready to take my time more, having it in better perspective. I do feel in a rush to get a new 12V battery installed and i want to have a good well charged new battery competently installed, friendly to my hybrid battery. i would take it to the dealer which is only about a half mile away but the Yelp reviews are so bad, ever since they were taken over by another company and restaffed.

Last night i came to check this thread and i couldn't connect, i got a 521 server error. not sure what that means but something about being blocked by priuschat. it continued today. i tried it this afternoon and it connected. i read something about my ip addressing being blocked, not mine in particular but that this can be a cause of the error. or an explanation of it.

 

Thanks -- if i have the SKS off, does that mean i won't be using keyless entry and and won't be starting up the car without the key? I will do that until i get a 12V battery, when i find someone to get it from, and a maintainer would be ideal because i usually drive less than once a week, and i don't even know, the weeks all blur together in the past year and even before that, but much more since then, due to not going to the store, ordering stuff delivered, and the point is that i'm likely to forget and to not drive the car long enough. Maybe i will remember but probably not, i'd rather have a way to keep it charged up good all the time since my lifestyle is almost devoid of driving until pandemic scares die down, if ever, and more is known about what's going on. Ever since i retired, i didn't pay attention to how much i drove but i drove enough during job for a quarter century, i wasn't eager to go anywhere in traffic. I need to call around to places to get a battery and see if they have maintainers there or if i should get one on Amazon. Thanks for a solution in the meantime!

 

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After getting more clear in the past few days about what might be the role of my 12V in other problems i've had, and learning the pretty dire effects of not driving it, i think i'll remember to drive it every few days now, but probably not for long enough. Still, better than nothing. thanks for telling me where to find the SKS switch. when i am ready to start it again, is it just a matter of switching it back on?