Toyota Dealership and Hybrid battery refurbish place have no answers, no clues!
2007 Camry Hybrid with 125K miles. Have religiously had it maintained at 5K
mile intervals at dealership. Have had refurbished hybrid battery
replacements with a highly rated local shop twice since 2021 - now 2024.
Since 2021, have incurred an issue with the usual warning lights - BUT when
starting the car fresh - absolutely NOTHING happens!!! Zilch! {Except the
useless warning lights.}
This is where it gets interesting. The dealership did a system scan upon
arrival after towing a week ago. The code proved useless. However, after
reading the code they simply DELETED the code. Guess what? It worked
fine... for another week or so. Then another repeat issue.
I read back through my numerous notes. I had forgotten about another
previous - yet TEMPORARY - fix. As mentioned by another commentor here,
simply - but in the correct order - remove the 2 cables to the 12V battery in
the trunk; then - in the correct order - reconnect them. Worked - temporarily -
just like deleting the diagnostic code. But it's only a matter of time before it
leaves me or my wife stranded somewhere AGAIN.
I've since left the diagnostic tool in the car in addition to a socket wrench with
an SAE 3/4" (not metric ironically) 12-pt. socket.
Hardly a long-term solution. It reeks of a bizarrely uncommon electrical
problem, not directly associated to either battery. (Very humble opinion).
Additionally, related or no - (who knows???) - years ago before all this - the
stereo/cd readout console would just go crazy with what looked a bunch of
binary code if in some Far Eastern language. I mentioned it to the dealership
service people during a regular maintenance interval. They had no clue what
I was talking about.
Any of this ring a bell to anyone?
My first and last hybrid. Great car other than that. Besides, we're now retired,
so don't put on a whole lot of miles on it to be saving money, even at today's
gasoline costs.