Toyota Dealership and Hybrid battery refurbish place have no answers, no clues!

Asked by JeffLongtimeToyotaOw... May 21, 2024 at 03:02 PM about the Toyota Camry Hybrid

Question type: Maintenance & Repair

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.

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