My beloved Gen II, with 160,000 miles, this week started stalling (drive systems shutting down) when I press the accellerator to pass or to regain speed after slowing to enter an intersecting roadway. The dreaded red triangle and the check engine light come on. After pulling to the side of the road and fully shutting down, the system will restart, although the warning lights stay lit. (They both go out after a time.) Am out of town for a few weeks and hope to gain some insight that will allow me to wait until I can get the car back to a trusted service department. Suspect fuel filter, but replacement seems to require removal of gas tank. Ideas?
That may be a very very dirty throttle body. I looked at my 07 at just 20K miles and it was pretty sooty. Get a flashlight and open up the engine air filter assy then reach under the left side of the throttle body and turn the spring to open up the tb butterfly. Look down there deep inside and see how dirty it is. If you search my old posts I have a complete write up on how to do it. Its very easy. Clean that first and see how it goes. Btw, have never read a post where someone had the fuel filter serviced. Please give us more detail about how the car/engine/trans has been serviced especially the spark plugs. If sp's were never changed hit those with the throttle body clean and then while in there clean the MAF sensor.
The fuel filter in a Gen2 Prius is an integral part of the fuel tank (as is the fuel pump). It is not serviceable. JeffD
Getting the diagnostic trouble codes read would be helpful. I think Auto Zone still does that for free if you stop by. If you tell us what comes up it would take some guesswork out of it. No harm checking the throttle, though. That's a known issue and an easy fix if it is in fact causing this issue. (And even if it isn't, it almost certainly could use a cleaning by 160k.) The symptoms do match fuel starvation, too, but I would be surprised unless you got a tank of contaminated fuel.
Your car seems to be behaving as if it lost fuel pressure. I would expect a P3190, P3191 or P3193 among other DTCs to be registered. This will narrow down the problem considerably.
