How did a wire get cut? Have a chipmunk or squirrel in your car lately? Those wires are usually wrapped and it's pretty darn difficult to get a wire cut. Let us know how you make out and like the rest have said... the fuel tank has nothing to do with your problem. I can't see the fuel tank ever being a problem inless you were rear ended very very hard.

 

Thanks for all the advice you've all given me so far. I called my regular mechanic for a second opinion; Ernie, one of the owners, said that the other owner, Mark, would call me back. I called three times but never got to speak to Mark. Mark and Ernie are good guys, and they've always treated my cars well in the past. This is the first time that I can remember when they let me down.

I thought about having the car towed to another Toyota dealer for a second opinion, but towing would cost about $100 and I can only take so much time off from work.

Star Toyota, the place that currently has the car, hooks the car up to a computer. The computer reports various codes that describe what is wrong. When you ask for an explanation of what was wrong, the dealer's representative says that "a code came up on our computer." This is the auto repair of the future. It will happen to all of you some day.

If I brought the car to another dealer, they would probably hook it up to the same type of computer and give me a similar report. Or it could be a worse report.

Toyota refused to pay for a new harness. Good for them. They probably smelled a rat. The dealer has only one mechanic who has been trained to work on Priuses, and he was busy Friday morning. During the afternoon, he fixed the cut wire without replacing the harness. Now they tell me that one of the four thermistors (devices that keep the batteries from overheating) is broken. If they can get the part tomorrow (Saturday), maybe I can get the car back.

Different parts of the car are warranted for different lengths of time. For example, the batteries that power the car have a much longer warranty than most of the rest of the car. It seems that the computer has a longer warranty than the gas tank/fuel pump or the harness.

I'm expecting the bill to be $1000+, not including what I've paid for towing. I may find out tomorrow, or maybe next week. I'll post a final report when I get the car back.

 

Fixing the cut wire without replacing the harness (i.e. splicing) is either an acceptable method of repair or it isn't. If it IS acceptable, they should have offered this as an alternative up front. If it is NOT, then they shouldn't be doing it at all.

Either way, sounds like you defintely need another opinion and a new dealer.

Good luck.

 

At this point getting a second opinion won't help much, but since they fixed the wire and now say that a thermistor isn't working (there are several in the battery) I wonder if that fixed the problem, or if they are replacing the ECU as well? If it was just the wire causing the other codes then that makes sense. I'm not sure if a bad battery thermistor will prevent the car from running, but seems to me that it shouldn't be too expensive to fix, being a relatively inexpensive type of sensor, although I can imagine Toyota will pad that with a thick profit for good measure.

Also, you might ask them if they think they know what might have caused the wire to become cut, if it's something that other Prius owners should check into before it happens it would be good to get that info.

 

Since there are four thermistors, I'm guessing there's some kind of redundancy built in to protect the battery if one or more fails.

Normally, wire repairs are a suitable alternative to replacing a whole wire or harness. As long as the wire carries some kind of signal that is not overly sensitive to resistance or capacitance caused by the repair, there's no problem. Examples of wire repairs I wouldn't do are large power or ground wires, or wires related to throttle or steering.

 

I don't trust these dealers. I took my car to a Saturn Dealer some years back.. I was having clutch problems. Wel, it had a whole bunch of other problems, various seals on differnt parts, etc etc.. and they said my master brake cylinder was leaking & needed replacement.

I couldn't afford all the repairs, so I didn't do the leaking master brake cylinder. Well, I drove the car for another 130,000 miles and never added a drop of brake fluid. Makes you wonder about the other needed repairs.

Thought this might be similar to your situation.

 

Yes, very fishy that none of their diagnoses fit with the original problem report.

Did you receive the letter from Toyota extending the warranty on your steering rack? IIRC they extended it to 5/yr unlimited miles on 2001/02 and maybe some of the 2003. If your problem was really steering related that's the first place I'd have looked.

What codes did they pull from your car? I have a hunch what's going on but it really depends on the "P" code they got out of the OBD system.

 

Again, thank for all the replies. I didn't know to ask what codes the "OBD" system showed for the car. I assume that "OBD" refers to Toyota's diagnostic computer system. (I'm a techie, but I prefer using real words to acronyms.)

I got the car back last weekend. The dealer charged me $1050. From my conversations with him, I guess he thought that I would give him a hard time if the bill was much higher. Actually, I'm an honorable guy and I don't stop checks or dispute credit card charges unless I can prove fraud. In this case, I couldn't.

The car drives fine. It was a painful experience but it could have been worse. I spoke to the mechanic on the phone this week, but he had no explanation of how the wires were cut. In his view, I did nothing wrong and there is nothing I should do differently in the future. That was disheartening. When something bad happens, I try to learn from the experience. I didn't learn very much in this case.

The whole business confirmed that I will never bring my car to a dealer for service unless I am absolutely forced to. Good luck to all of you -- may your wires remain uncut.

 

OBD==On Board Diagnostics. It's an industry standard for auto computers mandated by the EPA. The system stores "fault codes" among other things that mechanics can use to help diagnose problems.

In my case I had a code of P3191. There's a service bulletin that indicates several failures which can cause this code to be thrown, either the fuel pump (which is part of the fuel tank assembly), the engine computer, or the "circuit opening relay". Since the relay costs $18 compared to $300 for the fuel tank and $1000 for the computer I tried the relay and have had no problems since.

I'm concerned that if you had the same trouble code, rather than try to figure out which part was the problem the dealer replaced multiple parts at once. This is not good diagnostic procedure and is a very expensive way to fix a problem.