Last weekend my '03 Prius just... stopped working. My wife drove me to the airport for a business trip and when I retuturned a week later the car's electrics were completely dead. No lights, no radio, no power locks, no nothing. My local dealership says to have the car towed to them so that they can hook it up to a scanner but since these fora have been useful resources in past I wanted to go armed with any suggestions or advice that you lot might have to offer.

A few data points that may be relevant here:
- I bought the car used, but took it to another dealership for a checkup, which it passed,
before buying.
- The car has an after-market alarm system. A few days before I left town, the fob for the alarm
system stopped working. A replacement battery for the fob fixed the problem, though.
- I live in the Boston, MA area and it has been pretty cold lately.
- As far as we can tell no lights were left on in the car
- I attempted to jump-start the car with no effect

Suggestions? Advice? Anything in particular that I should ask the dealership about?
Thanks!

 

You probably have a dead battery... not the main pack but your 12volt battery is dead. The cold doesn't help either. I suggest having that replaced, or look at the indicator to see if it still has life.

 

that's why I ponder about getting extra accessories for the classic prius because I've read the 12 volt can be drained so easily. How long did your have your aftermarket alarm system for? Was there any long term storage?

nm: It was a week, now that I've reread your thread! Ya time to buy a new battery!

 

Since you did try to jump start the Prius, and that (done correctly) should have overcome a discharged 12 v battery, I am tempted to suspect the aftermarket alarm system. Not really sure that it adds any security on top of the original Prius system, so I would like to see that thing removed.

DAS

 

I heard that 01 priuses didn't come with no anti theft at all nor an immobilizer is this true? I know the 02 models started having them since I'm pretty paranoid about theft, does this rule apply to the Canadian models as well? Since I noticed some differences between 01 American, and 01 Canadian models like cruse control, but anti theft is my number one concern. Can anyone clear this up for me?? Thanks!

 

Could just be the main fuse is blown.

 

I'll go ahead and exposemy ignorance here:

I think I did the jumpstart procedure correctly (I followed the instructions in the Prius manual), though I later read that maybe I shouldn't have done it that way. Here's what I did:

1) Line up the cars and connect positive to positive and neg to neg with the jumper cables
2) Turn on working car and rev engine at 2k rpms for ~ two minutes
3) Turn off working car
4) Attempt to start Prius

I later read that having the working car on actualy risks exploding the battery in cold weather, but that's what the Prius manual said to do. On the other hand, if it really is ok to have the other car running, should I have left it going as I tried to start the prius? I'd been assuming that the previous revving should have charged the Prius' battery whether or not the other car was running when I tried to start it.

Was there any obvious mistake that anyone can see in what I did or should I definitely start looking at new batteries. Is the dealership likely to rip me off vs and independant place or should I stick with them?

Thanks again for the advice.

 

This sounds right.

The risk is whenever two voltage regulated circuits are tied together, they can get in a 'fight'. Murphy's law says the more expensive part will fail to protect the cheaper part.

I suspect the battery fully discharged and then froze. The case should have kept all of the acid but the plates may be in really sad shape. If you tried to jump start on a frozen battery, it would not have worked.

The Prius battery has a lot less capacity than a regular car battery. It is really there for surge loads and to power the electronics. Furthermore, the 01-03 Prius battery has smaller terminals. Replacing that battery from Toyota will be fast but is likly to be expen$ive. There are reports that a Miata battery can fit but you'll need to replace the battery clamps for US sized terminals.

My recommendation is to:
1) pull the battery from the car
2) take it to a nice, warm battery shop and see if they can resurrect it
3) discuss the Miata battery option and clamps
4) put that alarm system on a seperate battery!

If you keep the alarm system and install a seperate battery, have its battery pull power from the cigarette lighter. This circuit comes on only when the car is running and can provide over 10 A. Also, make sure there is a low-voltage cut-off on the alarm system because draining its battery too low is also a very bad thing. If not, put a current limiting resistor in to avoid blowing the cigarette lighter fuse.

Now do you know how the Prius key works? It has an identifier that the engine controller has to see to operate. If you lose all of your keys, you have to buy a new, $1,500 engine controller. If you have one key, you can program the controller to recognize other keys. The engine controller is a computer and there is NO SIMPLE JUMPER to over-ride it. In fact, if you have a blank cut at a hardware store, it will turn but not start the car.

The only type of anti-theft system that makes sense would be a lo-jack (sp?) that can be used to track the vehicle if it is towed away. But even then, the thief is faced with a useless engine controller. All they could do is part-out the car.

Regardless, GOOD LUCK!

Bob Wilson

 

Thanks for the advice! I'll look into doing this this weekend.

--Brad

 

Bob your the man thanks for the info about the Prius key. Never knew that!