2004 Prius 218,000 miles, I'm on my 4th refurb HV battery. driving with check engine light for catalytic converter error for a while, haven't check code in a few weeks. Today while driving in town (15mph) I smell something electrical (even my 4 year old said "something smells bad"). about 5 seconds later, car shifts into N, full gas bars blinking, red triangle comes on, and the circle with (!). Car is dead at a stop sign. I put it in park and it won't restart. I call my hybrid battery guy and he suggests its probably the inverter coolant pump (i had replaced it about 2 years ago with a dorman so it is probably about to die again), he says do you it smelt under the inverter, and I say it does smell under the hood, but not specifically anywhere. He suggests swapping the AM2 and pulling the pump power (single black connector above the fuse box) to limp it home. I pull the am2, don't see it being burnt up and unplug the connector and same thing. I have some people stop and we try to jump with car, and power box, nothing. Everytime I try to start it turns on for half second then turns off (you can see green outline of the PNDL selector. I can turn it on over and over again to get the windows up luckily and i can move it up a few mm at a time. at some point the 12V is done because I can't open the trunk due to power and lights being dim. so the 12V has something to do with it but something has burned up just don't know what. My other hybrid battery guy after telling him all of this thinks it might be the fuse bank something in the fuse box (not the main fusable link). i did look at the fusable link and didn't see any burned up spots. I made the mistake of trusting someone to give me a jump a year ago and had the connections switched. I eneded up having to replace the fusable link and the inverter because of that. made sure not to do that today
It's not inverter pump... Probably another bad refurbished battery... First step is to get the 12v charged up with a legitimate battery charger, preferable smart charger, of 10amps or more. Next step is to get one of these devices: Panlong OBD2 Scanner Bluetooth OBDII Diagnostic Tool Car Code Reader Turn Off... | eBay so you can connect your phone to your car to use Dr. Prius and other apps to get error codes and battery health data. Having one of these devices in your glove box means you can clear the error codes (turn off red triangle) until the car notices the problem again, which sometimes can give you enough time to get safely home.
The Gen 2 OEM is a YUASA S46B24R 12v battery. It has a sticker label directly on top that states: never add water never charge quickly charge current should not be higher than 4.2 amps charging time should be less than 10 hours. never remove the upper cover No need to multiply your problems by risking damage to your 12v battery. Maybe I only follow this recommendation because I have no courage to try new and untested things due to having a high desire for reliability. If your battery is other than a Toyota, it may have different requirements. Either way, good luck.
UPDATE: I got it home via flatbed tow yesterday, didn't have time to mess with it. this morning I go out to play around and hook up the 12V to charge to see if it will do anything with a refreshed battery. hook up the slow charger, but realize the hatch opens when yesterday it wouldn't because the 12V was low. weird. I check the original 15A AM2 fuse and the current AM2 fuse and both are burnt (the spare from yesturday may have been already burnt from past? i can't remember if I didn't replace). So I put a new 15A in and with Car hooked to trickle charger it starts right up. and codes gone. I don't have any more 15A but it does appear now to be the inverter pump.
Smart chargers adjust the amps based on what the 12v can handle... Toyota 4.2 amp limit is to protect from dumb consumers using dumb chargers. Go into any shop in a Toyota Stealership and you'll see a 12v charger capable of going up to near a 100amps.
Guessing at what could be wrong can work - sometimes. Did you actually replace the AM2 fuse? (I have seen "partial" fuse failure before) I would suggest charging the 12V battery and scanning all systems on the car with a capable scantool. Here's a thread that reviews several apps and devices for smartphone. The summary is post 37. https://priuschat.com/index.php?posts/3246758 Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.
Anyone who actually frequently works on cars has a charger that can go to at LEAST 100 amps, as it's needed when desiring to start a car. That doesn't mean they use it to do a charge cycle on a battery. The 4.2 amp limit is specified by the manufacturer of the battery. YUASA has been doing it for a while, so I would tend to follow what they say. I have no courage, but I do have a very reliable 12v battery. You say stealership. You buy a $200 battery and accidently drain it by leaving a light on. It clearly shows a charge current limit on the top. How would you feel if you took that battery to a dealer to charge and saw them charging it at 3x that limit? Would you be ok with it because they're using a "smart" charger?
I do need to get a scanner, I've heard some of these scanners don't have the right internals to work with Dr. Prius. have you bought this same on from same seller? I don't want to buy the wrong scanner.
For your situation, the Dr Prius app is not the best scanner to use. You need a scanner that can read ALL the trouble codes in your Prius. The Dr Prius app can not do that. Take a look at this thread. Read post #1 and then post #37: https://priuschat.com/index.php?posts/3290690 The Autel AP200 is an excellent choice. If you are an Amazon prime member, the price right now is $59.
UPDATE: Replace the inverter pump with Aisin pump, replaced the 12V battery (with OEM Toyota) because it was on its last leg and ol' Bessy is up and running again, lets hope it makes it another 218k. thanks Team!
