Good evening, Recently acquired a 2002 G1 Prius and looking forward to fixing it up. It came with a new hybrid battery so I have high hopes and hope to get some help with the minor issues i'm facing. I do have a Techstream cable on the way with software, so I'll be able to do more once that arrives. When I received the car, the 12v was completely dead and ECU-IG fuse was blown, and the key would not come out of the ignition unless the battery was disconnected. I unplugged the park sensor under the steering wheel and that fixed that issue and the key comes out every time. Replaced the fuse and power steering was restored. The steering wheel experiences a 'wet dog' shake most noticeable when the car is still or at slow speeds. I saw on other posts that this is common from the torque sensors on the rack. I had an alignment done on it and the wet dog shaking became worse. A friend of mine came over to use his Autel scanner to do a zero point calibration, and initially it kept failing and was stuck with no PS and the triangle was illuminated. He did not reset it or disconnect the battery, only followed what the scanner said. Eventually he was able to get it to accept it by holding the wheel in just the right way after failed attempts of not touching the wheel, but now the steering is even worse and shakes a little more, also pulsating when up to speed. Do I need to start from scratch and do the calibration again with Techstream? Am I chasing a pipe dream with these calibrations or is the rack in need of replacement? Would using a proper Toyota setup (Techstream) make any difference?
This issue has been discussed a lot here and, IMHO, still remains a mystery. Replacing the rack is the known solution, but it's pricey for what these cars are worth, and a bit of work to do. I'd only do it if it's an uber-nice car with low miles. There was a theory floated by some smart guys that applied low voltage 9v battery through the harness to "burn off" alleged "whiskers" on the electric contacts (whatever that means) that are common to this technology (whatever that is), but I never read of a final conclusion. And, I believe others have tried to disassemble the unit to repair, and maybe that worked (I don't recall) but it was a lot of work as well. I assume you've read that you can simply unplug the harness behind the glove box to make it go away, but then you don't have power steering. Not a major problem on little cars, except in parking lots, sharp turns at slow speeds/stops. And, you know that if you just grab it and force it to stop, it will - like grabbing a tuning fork that's vibrating. It only does it at real low speeds. While driving it's fine. So just hold up tight until you get going. So, I don't have much to offer except to say I do have a couple of parts cars with working racks, but I'm too old to take them off. You're welcome to. They're here in Houston. And, there is another hope... One of my cars had this bad. Shake violently at start-up. Drove it from MN to CA and home to TX and it'd do it whenever I first started moving. But the car developed other problems and spent most of a year parked before I fixed the other problems. After finally getting those issues fixed n(replacing the gas tank/fuel pump, rusty fuel filler tube), it's never done the steering vibration again. I don't drive it a lot, but I've probably put a thousand miles on it and never a vibration.
