It was reflected that I was somewhat paranoid when I received a letter from Toyota noting that my 20K check was coming up, it was and never having the car to the dealer I was convinced they had installed a monitoring system on the car. Well, now I know of Toyotas super precognition.....Yesterday I rec. the recall on reprogramming the ECM. Since the car had no problems whatsoever I thought I would wait and, perhaps, bring it in at my convenience. However, this morning the Gods of Toyota ruled otherwise and promptly put a curse on my ECM. My symptoms were identical with the recall description except the car was in the garage and would not power down or go into gear. However I foiled Big Brother by getting out my trusty 7 Amp Gel Battery and parraling it into Prius. Immediate response was obtained, I was able to power off, reboot and drive off to another day in paradise. Interestingly there was a Voltage differential tween front and rear 12VDC access points. Rear reading >12 and front= <9VDC (and dropping fast) so a severe short or load is happening somewhere. So, Please be advised: do not even think of ignoring any recall notices as BB KNOWS what you are thinking! (my poor andyprius is alone and forlorn in some huge lot, in the darkness. It has never been left alone before)
That is NOT what the recall addresses. If you have readings that far off, you have big problems unrelated to the recall and you need to get it fixed. It really sounds like a bad ground connection somewhere. With a voltage drop of 3 volts, if 100A was being drawn, that means wiring resistance of .03 ohms, and if it is with a 20A load (which would be more normal) that would mean a .15 ohm wiring resistance. These values are way too large. Now there is a condition known as Hang on Ig-On that sometimes occurs with 2004 vehicles, where when you try and power up, the car does not go into full ready but instead gets stuck in Ig-On mode (amber LED on power button). Solution out of that is to press power WITHOUT pressing the brake. Then you can try and get back to ready again. The recall addresses a situation where the ICE fails to re-start usually while you are driving. You still have electrical power and can drive the car safely off the road when this happens. A workaround is to power off, wait 25 seconds, and power back on. Sometimes you have to repeat that a few times before ICE finally starts and things are normal again.
