Red triangle going downhill

Discussion in 'Gen 3 Prius Care, Maintenance & Troubleshooting' started by ChrisP60, Aug 7, 2024.

  1. rjparker

    rjparker Tu Humilde Sirviente

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    When it’s the common reason it’s not lucky. Changes of elevation and corners nailed it.

    As stated before, your version is only v wagons which started in 2012.
     
  2. V Sport Wagon

    V Sport Wagon Active Member

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    Somewhat, but no. In the case of a commercial shop never seeing the triangle or heard of anyone reporting that symbol when oil level is low (unless already ZERO oil and hole in the block), I would not wait and guess what symbol will show up and advise 5k oil changes and every week top off if they know they have oil burning since my professional hands on experience is different than your "book" experience.
     
  3. V Sport Wagon

    V Sport Wagon Active Member

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    It's not the common reason, I've seen the triangle or other warning lights combined with error message on dash for mostly everything BUT low oil. Nuances and splitting hairs over what version is which, I see hundreds of these cars both wagon and hatch back per month. You guys just chatter here with stuff you heard or assumed to be true based on a manual. I've seen warning lights come on and DTC's "on elevation or corners" when it was a bad fuel pump, slightly unplugged evap hoses, or even a couple HV batteries that had a bad portion of the bus bar harness where "spirited" driving dislodged and caused a P0A80.
     
  4. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    Post #13 assumed nothing to be true, and merely demonstrated what the liftback does. Not until post #20 had I even found the page in the manual that shows exactly what it does.

    So it could be some kind of coincidence that what the car actually does turned out to exactly match what the car's manual says it does. But I run into that kind of coincidence pretty darned often.

    Not so say that I've never found errors in a Toyota manual. The ones I've found can still be counted on one hand after sixteen years. (In probably the lion's share of those cases, you can kind of squint and see how something that was probably right in Japanese might have confused the English translators.)

    Seeing hundreds a month of different models has many upsides, but there can also be a downside where some of the details start to blend together.
     
  5. V Sport Wagon

    V Sport Wagon Active Member

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    We only work on primarily 3 variants of Prius which of the 3 include a CT200h (with the occasional Gen 2 and Gen 4 coming in for minor things not oil related). Details don't get blurred sir.
     
  6. rjparker

    rjparker Tu Humilde Sirviente

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    It’s a socal thing
     
  7. V Sport Wagon

    V Sport Wagon Active Member

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    Truth is Universal.
     
  8. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    Your post #15 attaching an owners' manual clipping for the wrong model car did not show you paying the maximum attention to detail that you possibly could.

    It's ok, I remember things from different cars too, I know how that goes. It's part of why I didn't post #13 without first going to an actual gen 3 and checking what exactly happens. I knew if I didn't do that, I'd be taking a chance of posting something not quite correct.
     
  9. V Sport Wagon

    V Sport Wagon Active Member

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    They still all have what I originally said they have despite the screenshot not being the lift back. If you were a hybrid specialist and had experience in the automotive field beyond this website, I'd take this for more than the grain of salt that it is. This really isn't even worth arguing about since I already know what each car says when the oil pressure drops and don't care to have the back and forth with a quoter of service manuals. I'll save the intellectual conversation for the Master Tech or Hybrid Specialist who has the daily hands on experience.
     
    #29 V Sport Wagon, Aug 11, 2024
    Last edited: Aug 11, 2024
  10. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    Again, post #13 demonstrates exactly what the gen 3 liftback does and doesn't have, and can easily be replicated.

    It does happen to match the manual. It doesn't happen to match what you have said.
     
  11. V Sport Wagon

    V Sport Wagon Active Member

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    Good now demonstrate it without grounding it manually, and do it on 2012+ up cars without malfunctioning dash clusters.









    For the lurkers: Don't be gas-lit by people who only read manuals and only have their own vehicle for reference that post anecdotal evidence and gray area solutions, trust a better source. It's not real world diagnostics if "I checked it out on my car, so therefore it checks out".
     
  12. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    I was careful to write post #13 so that even a hybrid specialist would be able to follow the steps and replicate it, and I wouldn't mind a bit if a few more 'lurkers' (some of whom have pretty good technical chops around here) were to go ahead and replicate it, so we wouldn't just be talking about my car. And who knows? Maybe we would find something different on 2012+ cars, and that would be good to learn (even if the OP in this thread happens to have a 2010).

    That isn't anything we've learned just by putting your word against Toyota's, but if somebody demonstrates it—which takes all of five minutes—that does the trick.

    Sure, anybody replicating #13 would be grounding the circuit manually. So it's a start, anyway. Then we can all enjoy your explanation of how the actual oil pressure switch does something different than grounding that circuit.


    Edit: one more detail when replicating: the engine, of course, has to be running. In other cars, the warning light is usually just simply wired right through the pressure switch to ground. It lights whenever the switch is closed, and that even gives you "for free" the automatic "warning lamp test" when you turn the key on before starting the engine.

    If the Prius were wired like that, of course, you'd have the oil pressure warning all the time when the engine is off. So in the Prius the warning is only enabled while the engine runs.
     
    #32 ChapmanF, Aug 11, 2024
    Last edited: Aug 11, 2024
  13. V Sport Wagon

    V Sport Wagon Active Member

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    So we can rule out which dash lights come on, and when they come on naturally instead of forcing a ground (with or with DTC)? No one is saying or has said it would or should react differently other than what the light looks like and if one or the other actually comes on. Anyway, your arguments are always circular, anecdotal, and really aren't much help. Check the dipstick and you won't need to worry about lights.
     
    ericbecky likes this.