I recently bought a used 2005 Toyota Prius and I love it but I got the temperature warning light when I was in a really long drive thru. Since then I bought a Bluetooth dongle to monitor the temperatures and have seen the engine temperatures get to 230-240. The inverter temperature gets to 170. The fan in front of the engine turns on but the one in front of the inverter doesn't kick on. I recently replaced the three way coolant pump but I was hoping someone can help me figure out where the root cause may be.
Air bubbles will cause a lot of this right off the bat It is very difficult for some to fill the generation 2 with coolant generally if you feel it really slow like I'm talking to trickle through the filler neck you will get two full gallons almost into the thing I mean you wind up pouring it up to the top of the filler neck and stopping watching that drop down in vanish doing this over and over and over and over again to you burn up in the heat outside or you're freezing the cold while you're doing this it takes that long sometimes there are automatic fill vacuum devices that you can purchase to do just this if doing this in 30 seconds is a thing I usually can do this with the first methodology in about 8 minutes then I go for a drive and then I come back I uncap everything and I try to do it again If it's full I fill to the top of the fuller neck it'll get to that little hole that blow off goes over to the opaque tank and then nothing it won't drop I can leave it sitting there for a half an hour watching it It won't move I put the cap on create the seal between the jug and the radiator itself and I know it's full there's no more coolant going in there at all. Then I go for a drive if I want I have an '09 car that's losing a little bit of coolant and I can't figure out where nobody can find it's not in the car outside of the car not going through the tailpipe don't smell it in the spark plug holes but every four or five days I get it out on the highway for an hour drive and my triangle will come on and off seemingly with speed or air going through the front of the grill when I get home I wind up putting in about a quart of coolant with the first methodology mentioned above it's like clockwork I didn't even know we had an overheat right I've never seen that and I don't usually plug up software to monitor temperature by degree I just know it's getting too hot because it's low I don't care what temperature it is it's just hot more than needed and it's not thermostat water pump belt or any of that It's literally near a quart of coolant to seemingly going somewhere every 5:00 or 8 days
Is the coolant level in the radiator full? (check when engine is cold) Do both radiator fans work? They should both turn on "low speed" (fairly quiet) when the A/C is turned on. They should both turn on "high speed" (louder) when the engine temperature gets high (around 200-205°F?). Does the radiator core (the part with fins) get hot when (Engine Coolant Temperature) reads about 180°F? I assume the ICE water pump & drive belt look ok? When the ICE temperature is high, does turning the heater on to "full hot" produce lots of very hot air, and does that affect ICE temperature at all? Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.
Coolant level is looking good. I just replaced the radiator/condensor fan as the one in front of the inverter was never spinning. Both are now spinning and I believe theyre kicking into low and high speed. I havent checked the radiator core yet, so I'll get back to you on that. I also recently replaced the water pump and belt (the belt was really loose and cracked all over and the water pump fins had a heavy squeak when spinning), I'll test out if the heater on to "full hot" blows out very hot air and see if it affects ICE temperature. I live in hot weather so I'll need to do more testing during the daytime, I ended up finishing up installing the new fans at night with it being 98 degrees out, but daytime temps get to 120 here.
Back your fans off physically so you can see the radiator core The back side of it with the vehicle warmed up right off the interstate whatever back the fans back so you can run your hand across the whole core of the radiator with it completely hot The car that is Do you feel any cool spots on the radiator like usually located around the center or the center of the fans or whatever that's important to note that indicates the radiator is plugged where that cool spot is and all the water hot or cold has to go around that cool spot so that can quite drastically lower the efficiency of a radiator very quickly I even checked this one installing a new radiator and other models of car It's easy for a radiator to have messed up tubing in it during manufacturers very hard to detect in quality control
