Hey guys, I got Red Triangle on my Prius a few weeks ago, I took it to my car mechanic and he said the inverter coolant might be the problem. So I bought it from the authorized Toyota dealership and had him install it... I thought that was problem solved, but then I got these lights. I had him read the code with his computer device and we see it's code P0A08. So actually... I've had this problem for nearly 2 years now. And I more or less ignored it .. it would come on for a few weeks, then go away. But I recently crossed 200k miles and thought I would be more careful as I've put some money on fixing the small stuff and really, really want it to last me until 300k. I had the 12v battery replaced 2 years ago. One other observation: I seem to have to replace my front headlights TOO often (like every 3-4 months I'd say one of the two headlights gives up and I have to replace it). I don't know if it's connected but I feel it might be. Other than this I never have any issues, no issues starting the car, no issues driving it. It drives like a dream (extremely quiet), I still get a solid 48MPG (never dipped below 48MPG I think). Any thoughts please? (I saw this post: Error Code P0A08 (and others?) - Safe to drive? | PriusChat -- I'm not good with cars or electrical stuff but I'll try to see; tips on this endeavor would be greatly appreciated) edit: Okay here's a pic of the 12V battery, it seems okay?
Headlights you just need to change those to H4 LEDs and all those problems will be gone when you do this you need to turn the front adjuster righty tighty about nine half turns for each housing you'll see the cutoff line immediately start to appear after that and then put that where you want it on the wall but it takes a bunch of cranking on the adjuster you'll think something's really wrong like I say it'll be about 9/2 turns that'll take care of your headlight problem for longer than you'll have the car and cheaper than the halogens considering the replacement intervals and way better performance once adjusted properly.
Thank you! The next time my lights fail I will get H4 LEDs. Might you have thoughts on what may be behind the Red Triangle Light/VSC light/etc? Do you reckon I can just "ignore" these issues as I have been ignoring them in the past 2 years?
you can have the 12v load tested at auto zone for free. if it's okay, you're probably gonna need tech stream for sub codes
Reality is a whole bunch of nonsense can set this code. And I agree if everything seems to be working why start wrenching on the car of course I'm not one to wait for things to really break per se but here with an electrical system like this if you have access to look at the freeze frame data in your inverter everything is charging well so on and so forth and you would think an HV battery code being assigned something might be wrong or not happy under the HV case bus bars and nuts corroded frosted some worse than others creates resistance and things that computers may not like to see and then when they do see these sorts of things intermittently it'll set codes on set codes on you know all that sort of thing so to get consistency you'll have to open up the battery case and make all those things clean and consistent again. Or at least that's what it seems to look like every time I get one of these and have the same issue if I swap the battery in the back for a known clean working unit most of these problems vanish I guess there's something to that.
^ This. P0A08 is about a status circuit between the hybrid-vehicle control ECU and the DC/DC converter, which is the part of the inverter assembly that provides your 12 volt power and charges your 12 volt battery. It's important to have that converter working properly, because a lot of stuff in the car runs on 12 volt power, and that 12 volt battery does need to get charged. The repair manual will show steps for troubleshooting that status circuit and working out how to resolve the issue. Toyota Service Information and Where To Find It | PriusChat
Tombukt2 might be thinking of P0A80, which is a code related to the traction battery. P0A08 is a different code, nothing to do with the traction battery, and nothing to do with any ECU "back there". The DC/DC converter is under the hood, and the hybrid vehicle control ECU is behind the glove box.
