Purchased a used 2001 prius 4 dr. sedan on craigs list in Sept 2011. Only paid $6300. Found out that the car was bought at an auction in New York state. It was a State government vehicle. When registering it I found out that the car needed a new catalytic converter and subsequently a new sensor after failing the initial emissions test here in CT. Now having trouble getting the car reset to take the 2ns test. They say that I have to drive in a DIFFERENT way to get the converter into the READY mode to retest it. How should I drive to get it READY? I drive about 75-100 miles(city) daily. Can anyone help me?
It is my understanding that you have to keep the engine running to run the test, and when they put it on the lift, the gas engine shuts down. If you turn on the air conditioning, the engine should continue running so they can test it. I vaguely remember a similar problem being discussed on the Yahoo toyota-prius list back in 2002 or 2003.
perhaps you need to drive it in such a way that the battery goes as low as possible. with the gII, a creep and crawl method works very well in keeping the engine off and wearing down the battery. then, when you take it in and fire up the a/c, hopefully, the engine will run continually.
