2004 Prius and faulty inverter coolant pump, code P0A93

Question

I bought a 2004 Prius with 270k miles on it about 1.5 months ago. I’m a delivery driver, and drive about 200-300 miles per day.

About 1 week after buying the Prius, the code P0A93 popped up for the first time. The red triangle of death would disappear and pop back up once every couple of days or so after that. Pretty much everything I saw online says this indicates an inverter coolant pump failure. I had it replaced.

The first couple of days after replacing it, I was really hard on the car, trying to get the error to come back. Before, it came up every couple of days under normal use, but it never did during this period. So I was pretty satisfied that we had fixed the problem.

1 week and around 1800 miles later (today), the red triangle flashed while I was on the freeway going around 72. I hooked up the OBD2 scanner and it said there were “0 codes.” I thought that was weird, but went in and “read” the codes anyway. Sure enough, the P0A93 code was there.

Is the fact it said “0 codes” indicative of anything if it went on the read out the old code (usually, it would say “1 code” after the red triangle popped up)? Is it possible the red triangle popped up as a result of a lingering code from before it was fixed? What’s my next step?

Answer 1

The fact it popped the "red triangle of death", means it is most likely a new code. In OBDII vehicles, if the warning light goes out without intervention, this is usually a sign that whatever caused the code to pop is no longer causing an issue. The light will go out, but in most cases, the code will linger in the register.

To get past this and figure out if it is still going to be an issue, clear the codes, then drive it normally. If it comes back, there's a continued issue ... but don't worry about it until it does. Who knows why it popped again. It may just be one of those things.