Prius (2004-09) :: Car Is Struggling A Lot To Climb Uphill
Sep 7, 2014
I've noticed that my car is struggling a lot to climb uphill. I am not seeing any signs yet but I hear the gas engine running hard all the time going 30mph-50mph depending on elevation. Battery level on the monitor is always one or two purples when climbing up but it charges pretty quickly downhill. Should I risk driving the car anymore? My next destination is Yellowstone and Banff National Park so these driving conditions will continue.
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gen 3 owner here. Pretty happy with the car and the mpg. One thing I don't fully understand is when I going uphill on the freeway at 65 mph (such as LA's 405 sepulveda pass), the bar gauge is telling me I am in the power region, but the energy flow graph is showing the battery is switching back and forth between charging and discharging. The battery level just stuck at 1 bar below full. Any way to get the battery to work out more during uphill, as I expect I can recover them shortly as I go downhill?
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Long story short, when going up hill or any incline for the matter it feels like it's struggling and lugging, blowing carbon everywhere. It's an automatic so I yeah can downshift sometimes but even turning overdrive off doesn't work in a lot situations. My EGTs are way too high and I'm not about to tow my project car to OKC unless I get this figured out. I live around Salt Lake City so towing can be hard up surrounding passes. Just cruising to park city at 70mph on I80 up a pretty good incline my EGTs were 1,000. Just driving around the city, some hills I see 700-800 when I'm going 35mph.
At stop lights I'm seeing 400 at idle. My probe on the pyro is going bad starting to flutter but even if I fix that I'm still having issues up hills. Boost is good, up-pipes don't appear to be leaking but fuel pressure is a little low @56 and I know it's not the fpr because I just messed with that yesterday, put a new poppet and oring in, I haven't checked the fuel pump yet or dropped the tank either. If it is in fact fuel pressure related, does it make sense for me to see smoke coming out, wouldn't that indicate too much fuel? I'm lost, it's driving unloaded like I'm pulling an anchor.
Regardless of which spring I put in the frx I get 56psi, even with the black one I may see 58psi but even with 58psi it was still lugging it's butt off up hills and making that terrible drone sound like F you down shift me now.
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I changed timing belt and water pump DIY back in Oct 2015. Ever since then, I get rough idling (car kind of vibrate and engine kind of struggling) after warm start (no problem with cold starts, it did stall once after the warm start).
Two days ago, I got a P0000 code, I thought it was due to low oil (happened before, I topped off oil 2500 miles ago), so I changed oil and filter. No problem yesterday, but today on my way to work. I got the p0000 code again.
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I recently got my 2007 Prius back from the body shop after a 13k repair following a crash that crumpled my front end. The car seemed to be doing fine, until a long, steep climb had the battery drop to one bar, speed dropping to 40 despite a floored accelerator, and a red triangle that appeared briefly before disappearing just as we completed the climb. It's the dropping speed despite a floored accelerator and the warning light that have me worried.
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I go over a mountain pass, to and from work. It is about a two mile up and down incline/decline. On several occasions while going up the pass,the gas motor has rapidly accelerated at a high rpm. I back off the gas pedal and check the 'battery indicator bars' and there are none. I then drive very slowly to the top of the pass and the batteries quickly recharge on the decline to a color of all light green bars, indicating a full charge. Same experience coming home. Once I do normal town driving, the bars settle around 'four or five blue bars.' Local dealer says there is on problem. I am driving at 55 mph when this happens.
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2005 Prius transmission starting to slip after hard mountain road climb? Just started to do this. Is there a transmission dip or check capability?
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A few days ago I posted a thread about losing power on a steep hill climb with a cold engine. I replaced the hybrid battery and all seemed well. A few days later, the problem occurred again--bummer. (The car has 120K miles and has spent most of its life in a hot and mountainous environment, and I knew the hybrid battery was failing, so that's not a problem.)
The car starts the climb OK, gains a few hundred feet in elevation, still has some charge left in the hybrid battery, then loses power, surges a couple of times, then comes to stop. The engine continues to run at idle and I get no warning or check engine lights. The "ready" light stays on. This time, the second time it happened, I turned off the car, turned it back on again immediately, and all was well. The remainder of the 1000' climb went fine. As did several other similar climbs on the same drive. Since then I've climbed this hill with a cold engine without a problem, so it's intermittent.
I hesitate to pay Toyota for a code scan since the check engine light did not come on. Should I do this anyway? My local auto parts store will scan for free, but I know that their scanner will not read Toyota-specific codes, just industry standards.
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My 2007 Prius has 120,000 miles. I live in a mountainous area. I need to climb 3 miles at 6% grade to get out of my neighborhood. Lately I've been noticing the traction battery loses charge fairly quickly and I've been thinking about replacing the battery. Much of my driving is in steep hills and I run a full charge cycle many times a day, so I guess I should expect some loss of life.
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I just bought this car last night from a guy with a dealer license. The car was used, so he sold it with an "as-is" statement. I've read there is a 2 day law to return used cars, but he never gave me this option.
I test drove the car but nothing appeared wrong except the heater did not blow hot, thought the car wasn't warmed up. May be unrelated. Anyways, driving on the interstate I noticed he pulled the battery before selling it to clear the trip memory, and all of that information. So I asked him and he said it was for a small part he installed (he showed me, it looks like a thermostat of some kind with a hose coming off of it, he did not know the name).
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Our 2006 Prius (175,000 miles) has recently suffered intermittent periods of diminished ICE power. For instance, for about 1 hour recently driving a hilly section of I-81 through eastern TN, the car was struggling to maintain 68 mph and the HV battery stayed mostly drained at 1-3 bars. Gas mileage was falling, but no misfire. After stopping at a rest area, it was fine. No OBD codes and ICE seems OK otherwise. Experienced a similar reduction in ICE power a few days later. Dealer has no clue. Similar experience I've had with another car was when it's catalytic converter became plugged, but that was not intermittent.
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My wife and i have noticed over the last few months that our 08 has been revving higher, (much higher), than it used to when driving uphill. It has 65 k miles.
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Today I was driving up to the highlands, and there is a hill I have to climb called 2 mile hill, it's an 8% grade, I started the climb with 7 green bars on the display, and the engine revved to what sounded like full pace (5000rpm) but I paid attention to the battery and it was actually being charged despite the situation. I got to the top of the hill and the battery was showing all 8 green bars. I'm shocked because I was going uphill at 65-70 MPH and it fully charged the traction battery.
I thought I heard a couple years ago that every couple months, the Prius will do this thing where it will fully charge the battery or something like that because of memory effect of the cells? Why it did this?
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I've bought a second handed European Prius 2en Gen from year 2006, the car is wonderful and I simply love it ! I wouldn't change it for anything, but yet I have some problems with it.
When I start the car I get the Red Triangle on the front panel, and exclamation symbol, a VSC symbol and an engine (?) symbol on. On the Display I always have a black bar on the top with a car and an exclamation point on it. Both can be seen int the pictures below....
At this point the car runs normally, the only things I notice are :
1 - When I stop the car (without shutting him down) I notice that the consumption of fuel is at 99.9/L because it is charging the battery, which is already full.
2 - The back-right ventilation fan of the car (on the passenger seat) is ON even when the Air Conditioner is OFF.
After a few miles (I don't know exactly when it happens, sometimes it happens when stopped, sometimes when on the road), the car beeps and then it shows a, on the same black bar on the display, a message saying "Problem", after a few seconds I get a Battery symbol on the right of the car with an exclamation point symbol.
At this point the car starts having the following problems :
1 - The motor begins to speed like if I was at full speed on the highway.
2 - I simply can't do an uphill, the car won't pass the 20Km/h speed, if I gain balance before arriving at the uphill, it will start losing speed until reaching the 18-20Km/h.
At this point I really don't know how to solve this. I only know that, the Toyota Representative here where I live (in Portugal), ask me for 2,975Euros (almost 3,263USD) saying that it is a problem in the Hybrid System. But yet it seems strange because from what I know, if the Hybrid System was compromised, the car wouldn't start at all.
Does changing the 12V Battery on the back would solve this (even knowing that the Display shows a fully charged battery ?) ?
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I found recently that my 04' Prius' engine easily goes higher rev than before (based on engine sound pitch). It happens mainly when cold start, go up hill. After warmed up and on flat road, it goes back to normal. Overall, still in great condition at 211K. MPG stays at 46 on meter when temp is around 45F with 50% highway drive at 100 miles/day. I suspect the serpentine belt slippery or something. What do you think? I think the belt is original. I bought it used at 104K.
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my 2004 aveo gallops when idling. when i put it in gear (automatic) it takes off by itsself. i dont have to touch the gas. going down the road it will climb to 50-60 miles an hour without touching the gas. i DO NOT have cruise control. what is wrong here?
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I have 2004 Ford, thought it needed injectors because it was struggling hard almost a side to side movement. Had a friend recommend replacing the FICM, did that now it stumbles, less often, less movement like it's muted. I noticed it again yesterday after hard breaking, but also really likes to do it in heavy traffic.
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My problem is this: when I am driving and press the throttle hard from low rpm (anything under 2000-2500), the car will struggle to pick up rpm, and be incredibly sluggish to accelerate, until it reaches around 3500 rpm, at which points it returns to normal. Whilst it is struggling to accelerate, the exhaust sound is almost like a subaru, in that there is a series of small burp noises which stop once it returns to normal acceleration. It only whilst attempting to accelerate from low rpm that I have this problem, i.e. idle plus mod-high rpm is fine.
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I drive a 2003 Focus ZX5. Over the last year, it's run pretty well, but one problem I encountered was that it would not start (occasionally) if I drove in traffic for a while and the engine was warm (not overheated). I mentioned this to my mechanic when the serpentine belt was replaced several months ago, but he was not able to repeat the problem and diagnose it. A couple days ago, the car started to run terribly (vibrating) and struggling when I pressed the gas. I took it to the nearest mechanic (not my normal mechanic) and had the spark plugs and ignition coil replaced. It seems to have alleviated the problem. So . . . a couple questions:
Was the engine's difficulty starting related to the spark plugs?
On a separate note, the mechanic I just saw advised that some of the vibrations (for instance, in idle) could be resolved with new motor and transmission mounts, which is not cheap. Is it worth it?
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A little background on my truck: Its a 2003 Nissan Frontier SE Crew Cab with a 3.3L V6 2wd, RWD AUTO. 78,000 miles. (yeah, I live in CO, so having this truck here doesn't really make sense when described through text, but with tire chains, and 200lbs in the bed it does better than most 4x4's if you know how to drive rwd! )
Anyways, I drove up to Aspen, CO and back from Colorado Springs (~575 miles roundtrip) for my rugby game and man did my truck have a hard time getting up the mountain passes. The speed limit in some places was 75 mph but I struggled to make it to 65 with the pedal floored-i think the grades were about 7% so not that much really for CO. I also noticed that my truck had trouble shifting into the right gear in my opinion.
I would be in 5th, and it felt like it would shift down to third and rev really high rather than shifting into 4th? My shifter knob has a button to turn off Overdrive, but i just didnt remember to turn it off and try driving like that, but would turning off OD make it up these mountain passes? If i can find some way to drive my truck up to Aspen without all the hastle (and embarassment) of not being able to go the speed limit, I would be so happy-that way I wouldn't have to drive our passat up there.
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I got a used 2012 Toyota Camry LE a week back, and I could feel that my Car Pickup speed is very poor and its struggling and jerking to reach 40 miles/hour speed, once reached 40 miles/hour then it runs smoothly.
I don't throttle more after a complete stop , but i could not see a smoothness or easy moving with my car. When I get to service station , they say its normal and they are saying i need to throttle more to get the right gear, as camry is designed like that.
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