Plan for the day: normal start to the day, then grocery pickup at 0800, put groceries away, deal with some paperwork, lunch, then at 1400 take the current feline invalid to the vet for a recheck, then maybe get some stuff done around here.
Well.
First I woke up much later than usual, though not late enough to create a panic, as such. Breakfast was a quick bowl of granola, though. Grocery pickup went smoothly, but it turned out that the produce was sparse, in particular things Joy had been kind of counting on for the next few days. (Also, still no frozen peppers-and-onions blend.)
Then I figured maybe it was past time to make sure the newer Prius and the truck were still OK. Go find the keys. Start the truck: OK. Leave it running for a while, and go over to the '09 Prius. Door unlocks. But... hitting the POWER button promptly drains the auxiliary (12V) battery. Oops.
There's some rigmarole whereby the rear hatch can be opened with the battery dead, but I don't know what it is. But wait! There's a jump point under the hood! So I open the hood, find the jump point, fetch the jumper cables, drive the truck over, and attempt a jump.
Turns out a Prius with a dead battery draws a lot of current. Like, more than the truck's alternator wanted to supply. Maybe if the truck's battery had been fully charged... or if I'd floored the gas pedal... maybe it would have worked.
What actually happened was, the truck's battery drained, in the space of well less than a minute, so low that the engine wouldn't run any more. Gah!
Well. Hastily disconnect the jumper cables. Fetch a charger, a voltmeter, and all the extension cords. Truck battery is at least at a level where the "smart" charger will recognize it as a 12V battery and actually charge it. Let it do its thing for half an hour, then start the truck and return it to its proper parking space, then sit there revving the engine for several minutes. Figure some morning Real Soon Now I should actually drive it somewhere, like to a gas station to top up the tank. (It also gets driven for recycling runs, next one in probably a week and a half, and gas station runs with a collection of gas'n'Diesel cans, next one maybe in a few days.)
Connect the charger to the Prius. It works, sort of, for a little while... but, as with the old Prius, there's a rather low threshold where things get nonlinear and the charger gets confused. Have to disconnect the battery and charge it isolated from the car, and as far as I can tell that requires opening the hatch, so off to the Internets in search of instructions.
Anyway, I think I found the right instructions, so tomorrow morning I should be able to get at the battery, disconnect it from the car, connect the charger, and put some electrons into it, then reconnect it and run the car for a while. (Idling a Prius in Park does do battery maintenance, unlike, as I'm reminded, idling the truck.)
Oh, and now the aux battery in the '09 Prius will presumably need replacing soon. At least that's available from the usual sources. Gotta replace the one in the '02 at some point, and those are harder to find; may end up contacting the local dealership's parts department and asking if they can ship one, because Pestilence.
Addendum: Maybe I should set up a trio of solar-powered battery tenders at the vehicles' usual parking spots. Though... connecting to the battery on the '02 Prius gets a bit problematic, maybe, what with the cable probably needing to come out from the trunk rather than from under the hood. But that car gets driven at least once a week these days, while the other two may sit idle for weeks at a time.
Update, Tuesday morning: With considerable difficulty, I got the hatch open from the inside, then I disconnected the ground wire from the battery and hooked up a charger. I'll check in with a voltmeter every half hour or so, and probably switch over to the bigger, "smart" charger once it's over 10V.
The top of the battery does show signs of age, so it was likely about due for replacement anyway. And, I may have found an on-line source for the '02 Prius battery. Probably ought to order one of each, to get both cars back into reliable order (though they'll still need to be run regularly).
And, weather permitting, I think after the Prius is dealt with I'll hook the charger up to the truck for a couple of hours or so.
Also! I looked up the fuse map for the '09 Prius, and, much to my disappointment, there's no 100A-or-whatever fuse that could be pulled, under the hood, to disconnect the 12V battery from everything except the jump terminal. Methinks Toyota's engineers haven't been maintaining elderly Prii. (OK, so this problem with the '01-'03 model wouldn't have become apparent in time for the redesign for the '04 model year.)
One more thing I noticed yesterday: the collision-avoidance system in the truck beeps frantically in proximity to tall grass. I think there's some way to disable it temporarily, if one is going to be driving through, or near, tall grass on a recurring basis. (We're talking a week's worth of summer growth, here, not full-fledged hayfield.)
Update, Wednesday morning: The '09 Prius is back in action, though the fuel level is unknown (killing the 12V battery resets the fuel status to "blinking empty"; since the level had been a bit low beforehand, I put in a gallon or two of lawnmower gas), and, this being a Prius, the stereo responded to the power cycle by turning itself on and finding what sounds like an NPR station. I don't remember if I ever did find an actual way of turning the dagnab stereo off such that it wouldn't turn itself back on at the next startup. (If memory serves, Inner Party members get an "OFF" switch on their telescreens, but it doesn't actually work.)
I put the Prius back in the regular overflow parking area, and moved the truck to this side of the driveway, where it's now hooked up to the charger. Didn't want to run an extension cord across the driveway when there are deliveries expected.
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