Tow Truck Driver Reverse Polarity Jumpstart

Yes, wires are screwed into the fuse terminals, and getting to the terminals is the hard part. A few more pictures in this post:

Reversed jumper cables blew 100A fuse in engine compartment | PriusChat

 

For those interested, this video shows the DC to DC converter in the Gen1. Removing it doesn't provide access for disassembly of a relay block.

If the converter is bad, this would be one reason for not getting the 14V DC from the engine to charge the 12V battery, but we already know the reason the battery isn't getting charged is the blown 100A fuse.

 

All Gen 1s look the same. I have 3 2001s, 5 2002s, and 2 2003s. They all look the same.

 

Well, there's a big difference between (1) undoing all of its electrical connections and coolant hoses and fully removing it from the car, and (2) undoing the four or so mounting bolts and shoving it aside for more room to work. People sometimes do (2) in order to work more easily on things in that area under the hood.

 

Reduced mpg is a clear sign of a bad hybrid battery. Mpg is the primary reason the hv battery is there. It is designed to capture otherwise wasted energy when braking and going downhill. The hv battery allows a reduced power engine design to be supplemented with "regen" battery power. If you want to keep the car, change the hv battery. You will get more power and mpg.

Sounds like the dealers left the 100 amp bypass jumper in which allowed your tow truck driver to start the car. As I said before, the dealer mechanics know how to bypass a blown 100 amp fuse in a matter of minutes. That bypass would have allowed them to run the car for 30 minutes hoping to recharge both batteries. At that point the hybrid battery was good enough to start the engine and may still be barely adequate. Given its age the hybrid battery is testing bad and throwing codes. Dealers don't like to leave that scenario as it points a finger at them if it strands you in the next few weeks or months. So they recommended a new hv battery. There are lower cost options. The one I like is all new cells installed for less labor by an independent.

 

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The non-Toyota mechanic had told me that the 2002 hybrid battery cannot have its cells replaced; it’s one complete unit. (I don’t know if that’s the case or not.)

Not true. You can buy the cells on Amazon, you can use gen2 cells in a gen1, the options are many.

Previously, the Toyota service advisor had written: “according to the health check scan, the hybrid battery show healthy.”

Obviously a mistake as well. Particularly after they tried to charge it and failed. At that point they recommended a new hybrid battery.

If I recall correctly, someone had written here that using a depleted 12v battery to run the engine could have led to the hybrid battery getting depleted and appearing to fail. Since the hybrid battery had just checked as healthy, that had seemed to account for the contradictory information.

There is a situation where a depleted 12v battery will force the high voltage system to excessively charge the 12v battery costing you mpg. This can be solved with a new 12v battery but is not an indicator of the hv battery health. It is important to note that a 12v battery by itself can not run the hybrid system without a barely adequate hv battery. A hv battery that is totally depleted won't start your car, stranding you.

Probably my best bet is to get the Prius checked at a shop that has an excellent reputation, like Luscious Garage in San Francisco.

I agree with that idea. You will get confirmation of what the car needs. Maybe not the lowest cost option but likely more cost effective than a Bay Area dealer

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Discussion:

Toyota did not make many 2001-2003 Prii. That generation was twenty years ago. Many of today's dealer mechanics were in grade school at the time and virtually all of them rarely see Gen1 cars needing repair. Primarily because few Gen1s still exist and secondarily because second and third used car owners rarely take their cars to a dealer for repairs.

Clearly your dealer was quoting "by the book" which means a longer, safer procedure where the mechanic removes more parts and replaces more things, by the book. Obviously, over a period of time, people find shortcuts and the owner who uses an independent shop benefits. At the dealer, the informed mechanic might take shortcuts but he is paid fixed "book hours" of labor. Dealer labor hours by the "book" are longer and the service advisor is usually on commission. A dealer is great when your car is under warranty, maybe not so great when the customer is paying the freight.

Guest Editorial:

Finally, there are a few of us on Priuschat who have owned and maintained these cars for 15-20 years. Some are well educated, decent researchers, lifetime learners and have the ability to see patterns while negating noise. Many Priuschat pundits possess a few of those attributes, some believe things that are not proven or worse yet, some offer answers that are not true at all.

Priuschat, as a forum, is not strongly moderated to clean up some of this problem. This forum does not allow a member to correct misleading information after a few hours, further complicating the integrity of the information. Other forums do better in their areas, but there is not a bigger Prius forum than this one. So conflicting and just plain wrong information is common here and is allowed to propagate.

 

I think that boils down to the way the 'edit' button locks itself out after so many hours. It's still possible to add a followup post to a thread with the corrected information ...

... which is why, any time you pick up some claim from a post in the middle of a thread ... it is a good idea to keep reading the thread, to see if the information ever got corrected later.

The "can't edit" doesn't seem to be an inescapable rule either; there have been times where I noticed that I posted something especially dangerous, like a part number with digits swapped, and I've made a report to the mods saying "please change the part number in this post to -xxxxy", and it happens. Naturally, I try not to bother the mods for every sort of edit I might otherwise make, like if I just thought of a better way to word something.

There wasn't always that edit lockout. If I remember the history right, there was once a member who had made lots of posts with very useful information, then got peeved with the forum and left, but not before editing and erasing every post they had ever made. So now it seems like we have this kind of inconvenient rule, meant to protect against something that only one person ever did and probably only one kind of person ever would do. But it was high impact....

 

And you can quote your erroneous posting, and note the post number, helps clarify.

 

If it's the original pack, replacing cells isn't an option. Gen1 cells aren't as good as newer generations, and even back in the day the advice was probably not worth replacing them. Now any you may find on-line are most likely pushing 20 years old. Gen2 cells are better, but all 38 will need to be replaced and they're still used.

Your old pack is worth around $1300 as a core when purchasing a new Toyota pack. which can be picked up from the parts department and installed by anyone that knows what they're doing. The $3200 quote doesn't sound like a terrible price, but you might find a better deal at an independent hybrid shop. I've read one advantage of having Toyota install the pack is it will have a longer warranty.

My experience is the cost savings from buying a remanufactured after market pack doesn't always add up, because they're only as good as their warranty, where as a new Toyota pack will last another 10 or more years.

 

Happy to read it is at least again on the road. You should get some cheap OBD bluetooth adapter and dr prius app for phone or tablet to keep an eye on your battery. Get your car running for few hours, it will try to rebalance cells but I have no idea what is condition required to do that, I noticed in my gen1 this is done at least 20 minutes after car is started. Most likely it will not fix the battery anyway.

Yes it can but car is very weak and struggle with little uphill. Very unpleasant.

It does have individual cells, in case single cell replacement, gen2 cell have to be used and it have to be slightly modified, also bus bar need to be made out of piece of copper because gen1 module is a bit shorter, I did it 3 times in my 2001.

If it was official Toyota garage they followed manufacturer's repair manual, they have to, that's why 100A fuse replacement cost is so high.

 

I would still call Luscious and get their price or referral on a new hv battery. You have several Bay Area options including the shop that installed your 100 amp fuse. If they can do that they can change a hv battery.

You might call Gasketmasters in the Bay Area and ask for a battery referral as well.

Some Toyota dealers around the country list a new Gen1 battery for around $1800 if you have an independent installer. I would try to negotiate with your dealer based on those prices.

Greentec in Hayward offers new batteries for a 2001. They also sell used replacements marketed as reconditioned or remanufactured. If you want to drive the car longer than a year or you value reliability, go with a new battery. Toyota Prius 2001-2003 Hybrid Battery with NEW Cells | Greentec Auto