Recently, Toyota Motor Corp. announced a recall for generation 2 Prius water pumps. The water pump in question is the inverter coolant pump. Its job is to circulate coolant to the inverter/converter which resides under the hood. The inverter is the “heart” of Toyota’s hybrid system taking direct current energy stored in the high voltage battery pack and converting to AC current to run the car. In doing this, a lot of heat is generated so a cooling system is required.
The official word from Toyota is that air is being trapped in the water pump causing low coolant flow. Why they would say this is a mystery because in my experience, it is simply not true. We have replaced many of these pumps prior to the recall and we replaced them because the electric motor that drives the pump simply quit working.
The good news for Gen. 2 Prius owners is that it is now a recall and Toyota will replace it for you free of charge. You should be getting a letter about this from Toyota soon. Please don’t ignore it. If you purchased your car used, you may not get a letter. Call the Toyota dealer and make an appointment to get it fixed.
When the pump fails, you will end up with a master warning light (big red triangle) and a check engine light glowing on your dashboard. Definitely don’t ignore that.
Whenever your Prius is in for service at Jacoby’s Auto, we verify the operation of the inverter coolant pump. Just to make sure…