The reality of my life or Just Call a Fucking Mechanic

[nwhiker]

A few weeks ago, I think I mentioned that the Prius was dead. Dh was able to narrow down the possibilities of what it might be to a few: easy to fix, moderately difficult to fix, expensive AND difficult to fix.

He needed to get some additional equipment to finish diagnostics, and he was busy last weekend. He finally got to it this weekend. The Prius was running for part of that time (the code reset or something) but last Monday when Perry and Linnea were headed out to rowing, the big Red Triangle of Doom was showing. So it became this weekend's top project, along with prepping the deck for staining.

When the Prius first died, I had, approximately, this conversation with Perry, who was asking what we could do. I said "Well, we could take it to Toyota and have them figure out what is wrong and charge lots of money to do that. Or we could buy a bunch of diagnostic equipment, electrical gloves, and make sure we know where you are likely to be hit with a 600V discharge from the battery, and try it figure it out ourselves. Which option do you think your father decided on?"

So. We have diagnostic equipment, better multimeter, and useless gloves because the places fingers need to be are too small for gloves.

The Prius battery is sitting on the workbench on the outside porch. Perry and dh are currently measuring voltage across all 28 left-and-right cells. Looks like so far they've identified 3 bad cells, two bad modules.

I have no idea yet what the repair process might look like, but I except it will not involve a Toyota dealer.

That said, two things:

1. I love that my spouse can do shit like this, even if at times I wish he wouldn't.

2. I'm really happy to see Perry helping and getting into it, even though it's not a video game. He likes puzzles. I doubly glad because it means I don't have to help. The novelty of a measuring voltage on a multimeter wears off real quick.

Comments

[camelsamba]

My spouse spent the afternoon repairing a double box fan (after he'd bought a new one that cost $60, and decided it might have been worth it to try repair first). Result: the busted side is still busted although its switch is now disabled, and the entire thing is much more clean. Why are we even bothering with box fans? Because the compressor in our HVAC died near the end of heating season, and about a year out of warranty. We hemmed and hawed for a few weeks, trying to decide whether to repair or replace - finally decided to replace, and are still waiting for it to be built and shipped... so we've resorted to box fans in the windows to help manage the indoor temperature. After a hot couple of days it's going down to mid 50s tonight, which should help!

[camelsamba]

And I hope your Prius repair works out on the plus side in the end.

[camelsamba]

Turns out it's a good thing he fixed the one fan, because the new window fan stopped working after two days. Replaced it with the same model. Guy at hardware store - a nice friendly hometown store, not a big box - said he had two of them at home and they worked great! Probably just a bad one, try again! Fan #2 also died after a couple of days. So now we have one from Target and fingers are crossed that it proves more reliable.

[camelsamba]

And now the refrigerator, which has had ongoing problems (many well-documented online), decided to die. And of course he's going to try to repair it. Luckily the rental house is currently unoccupied so we didn't have to toss out all the food (transported it via multiple trips with a wheeled igloo cooler).

[nwhiker]

OMG. Your life sounds like mine, because that is totally the kind of move we would pull. I'm sorry, because I know it gets stressful when you accumulate projects. The fan thing is one of the things that drives me nuts. I don't mind paying for quality, I just rilly hate paying for crap and having it fail. FWIW, we had excellent luck with box fans from Costco. I hope the fridge is an easy repair.

We're still dead in the water with the Prius. All the batteries -OEM, original, aftermarket- lack one thing: easily identifying part IDs. We pulled the battery on our Gen 2 Prius. It wasn't original but had been replaced just a few months before we bought by a reputable place in Portland. David and Perry figured out which cells were bad (Perry learning some skills on how to use a multimeter irl situations vs in a lab), and ordered replacements from a place with VERY good reviews. When they came... they did not fit. That is how we found out that the previous place, reputable or not, have put Gen 1 batteries in a Gen 2 Prius. Possibly why they failed.... Anyhow, we had to go with the medium-expensive option and have ordered a whole new battery pack. The dude who sells them is near Bend, OR, and if he can finish the assembly in time. my BIL should be able to pick it up before they come visit next week, saving us a week in shipping time. Having the Prius out of commission is a pain in the butt.