Today I bought a used Prius

I picked up this newest Prius today.  My 4th Prius so I will take to calling this one P4.  

I think I got a good one.

Here are some common pictures for me.  You see, once I get on the hyw from the Auction place, one exit down the road is a hyw rest stop.  I always stop there for a strap check.  After sending Seth off from the Challenge Hotel with a car that I poorly strapped on to the dolly, I always like to do a strap check just a short way into a trip.  

Stuffed in the trunk were these items.  From top to bottom:  A headlight with a minor crack in the back side black.  A little house caulk will make that good as new.  The crack is also at the bottom so even if water does get in, it will be able to drain out.  Black trim piece that goes over radiator top, good.  White styrofoam bumper form, good.  Black fog light cover, good but probably not needed since the repacement bumper cover should come with it.  Mangled bumper cover. 

In the trunk are all these neat little bags labled with where they came from.

The 12v battery is not the original but it does have a Toyota logo so at some point it was replaced at the dealer!  

Im very happy with the interior.

How are the battery packs in 10 year old Prius ?

and I was told that there is a European software patch that lets Euro Prius stay on electric longer for going thru the small villages.....

is that adjustable on the USA models ?

Battery packs: 

I have

• P1: '07 now w/ 135k, bought at 78k
• P2: '08 now w/ 137k, bought at 110k-ish
• P3: '04 sold/flip but had 158k.  I saw no evidence of hybrid battery tampering and no weakness.
• P4: newest with 188k. 

I have not had any Hybrid battery issues.  I have the Torque software fro Prius that I detailed a couple pages back on P3.  I ran that same software on P4 before buying it and all looked good.  

I was not aware of a Euro-patch.  Interesting.  On these Gen2 models ('04-'09) there is no adjustability to when it uses battery or when it uses gas engine (other than adjusting throttle inputs.)  

I can’t believe  the bagged mounting hardware is still with the car! Nice..

EV Mode hack is pretty common for the 2nd gen.  Kits here: http://www.elearnaid.com/evmoswforpr2.html

In reply to cdeforrest :

$30...Yeah

Out of stock...Booo

In reply to John Welsh :

you might try one of the European Prius forums if you cannot get one here.

John Welsh said:

In reply to cdeforrest :

$30...Yeah

Out of stock...Booo

That looks like $3 for a switch, $3 for printed photos and instructions, and "$24 for knowing where to put the chalk" as the old SR-71 joke goes.

I have to drive and hour to get it but I have negotiated this bumper cover down from its $200 online price to $100.  I'm gonna go get it tomorrow.  Small wrinkle in the lower driver's side that I can probably straighten (or live with.)  Missing the round tow hook cover but I still have the cover on my mangled bumper cover.    This bumper cover does not have fog lights and the car I bought does.  Looks like my car will have a fog light switch that does nothing.  I'm okay with that since there are no silver, fog light included, bumper covers within a couple of hours drive.  

Gotta love these things. For the record, mine with 276k when i sold it to yet another family member had dipped down to like 36-40mpg avg. I was able to do 48 when i got it at 217k. I attributed it to battery degradation, but new owner says he can still do 46-48mpg in it, so it might just have been the wearing off of any attempt to drive it nicely since it wasn't going to break and wasn't going to get 'bad' mpg regardless of how 'poorly' i drove it. I did floor it a whole lot. It's cheaper to WOT a Prius than it is to hyper mile a normal car, and more fun in my opinion. I've owned 5 hybrids now and have yet to give a crap about hyper miling anything but my Honda Insight because you can actually hypermile that up close to 100mpg. Anything short of that is a pretty boring game when you can haul ass in a stock 15 year old prius and still get 40mpg. Such are the distortions of the Prius. 

In reply to John Welsh :

Keep looking. You could diy it easily. Like the man said, just have to know what wires to hook up. I've seen other readymade kits 

John Welsh said:

In reply to sleepyhead :

The bissell is great for cars but even more importantly, I wouldn't have kids or pets without one. 

What do you use for the cleaner solution with the Bissel ?

I keep just plain clean water in the Bissel tank.  I use the spray can of Tuff Stuff and a scrub brush like you might you for cleaning the tub.  Along with that I have a spray bottle of water, for more water.  

• Spay the Tuff Stuff
• Work in with scrub brush
• Add additional water as needed
• Use Bissel to suck it all up
• The secret is to use a lot more water than you might first think is reasonable.

Tuff Stuff available everywhere . I have bought at Wal-Mart, Dollar General and Advance Auto Parts

$131 all-in with taxes for bumper cover and inner fender liner. I think I have everything needed. Now, just to find the time to fasten it all down correctly. 

Yesterday:

Today:

In reply to John Welsh :

Looking good John! You are moving right along.

Billy_Bottle_Caps said:

In reply to John Welsh :

Looking good John! You are moving right along.

Oh the humor of your statement.  In reality I have done the bare minimum.  When I brought P4 home, it had no bumper cover.  My general desire is to not have my driveway (parking lot) look like a settlement of decapitated cars, so, I quickly sourced a bumper cover and got it in place.  

Currently my drive looks like this:

If you zoom in close the reality is that the bumper cover is just set into place by 2 push-type fasteners and the headlight is held in place by one connector.  The sides of the bumper cover are not attached.  But, from a distance it achieves my goal of not looking like I have wrecked cars on hand.  

The greater part of the story is that I bought this car July 31st and from July 30 - Aug 9th my wife was on vacation in Italy with her sisters.  Furthermore, I was home with a 4.5 yr old and 1.5 yr old.  Needless to say, I was busy.  It was during daycare time that I managed to get the car home and get the bumper cover picked up.  

But, this Weds upcoming Weds 21th of Aug the car has an appt for its state inspection, so, I need to get cracking this weekend and get the bumper cover correctly mounted.  I am happy with the cars mechanical ability.  It now just needs some beautification and finalization of getting the cover on.   

As a continuation of this madness... 

Next week my local IAA has this Prius up for bid.  It is a 2006 w/ leather and nav making it generally have all the options.  159k miles.  What makes it unique is that it is a Charity Donation car.  These are often from when someone dies and the family needs to offload the car.  Or, the car needs major repairs that exceed the value to the average person.  It is stated to run and drive but those statements are generally exaggerated and a bad hybrid battery might still qualify it for the moniker.   

The car is listed as salvage but shows no real damage.  I think the charities just list them this way as a way of not taking responsibility for their road worthy-ness.  If you zoom in on the picture above there is a scuff and small crack in the bottom of the rear bumper cover.  There is also a missing lower rear spoiler piece on the driver's side.  The advantage of specializing in Prius lately is that I happen to still have the 3-piece lower rear spoiler pieces from the busted rear bumper cover of P3.  

I have my suspicions of trouble with this red Prius but I'll take my Torque diagnostic stuff with me the physically inspect the car and see what is really going on with this one.  

Service History:

I recently discovered that on Toyota.com there is a section for Owners.  In that section you can put in your VIN and it will give you back all the Toyota service data from dealership repairs...any Toyota dealership.  

For P4, I am very impressed with the results:

• It was last at the dealership in Dec 2017 at 172k for a replaced blower motor in the HVAC.
• April '15  at 139k it got 4 tires.  These are probably the 800 treadwear Yokohamas that are on the car an pretty much spent with 188k on the car now.  188k-139k = 49k  The Yokos have build dates of 10th week of '15.  Built in March, installed in April.
• March '15 at 137k, new exhaust
• etc
• all the while, the car was getting dealership oil changes!

For this Red Prius I ran the Vin through the system and the last time it was at a dealership was July '11 at 68k in Alexandia, Virgina.  If nothing else, this shows me that for the first 5 years the car was not exposed to the Ohio climate.  

I have since used this Toyota tool on another potential purchase.  There was an Avalon with no keys and since no keys, no way of reading the LCD odomter.  The Vin record showed me that the car had 139k miles 8 years ago.  I figured there was no good way that the car had less than 200k now.  

If you have a Toyota, I highly recommend running the VIn through.  

https://www.toyota.com/owners/my-vehicle/service-history

Thank you for the Service History link- that will come in handy with my wife's 2010 Prius although she likely may have most if not all of the service records from her father.  It is still good to be sure.



One of the issues I run into on IAA is that most of the stuff I am interested in isn't available to the public, even though 8 times out of 10, it is listed as "clear title"    Do you run into that issue?

In reply to Cooter :

That is highly state dependent. Some require dealers license some dont.

I am looking across the country.

is the Toyota info shared with Carfax ?

californiamilleghia said:

is the Toyota info shared with Carfax ?

I have no idea.  I have not paid to run a CarFax on any of my Toyotas.  However, the Toyota version is FREE and it is better detailed than carfax.  For my muffler repair entry it actually gave me part numbers for the parts replace.  However, other listing like tires just said Tires (no brand give) and mount/ballance.  Prices are not given.  Also no actual invoicing given that might lead to the name of the previous woner.  

Cooter said:

One of the issues I run into on IAA is that most of the stuff I am interested in isn't available to the public, even though 8 times out of 10, it is listed as "clear title"    Do you run into that issue?

Clear Title and available to public are not a direct combination.  Quite honestly they may be at odds with each other...

Of course this all varies by state but here in Ohio, my local branch, Cleveland autions off about 600 cars per week.  About 100 of those cars each week are dealer only.  

From what I can tell:

• If the car is tagged as Salvage, it is then just the wholesale sale of "auto parts".  Sure these auto parts may be in a mostly collective manner making it easy, with little effort, to put the cars back on the road.  But, some effort is required and that at least requires a state inspection.  
• Cars that are Repos are also open to the public here, but not all.  I have bought repos at IAA and the owner was LoanMax Title Loan company.  This is a vehicle then owned by a "financial institution" and can be sold to the public.  
• Most of the 100 dealer only cars are actually cars owned by dealership.  I think it is a state law that "dealers" can only wholesale to dealers.  If a corner dealer repos a car and then offloads that car via IAA then that repo is a "dealer only sale".  A lot of the dealer cars are trade-ins that are really rough. These cars are labled as Remarketing

Some sampling:

The Red Prius shows it is Charity but then further says it is owned by Ideastream which is the fancy name for Cleveland Public Radio/TV/Internet.  Since it is listed as Salvage it is public.  If it were listed as clear title it would be dealer-only.

A High mile '04 Honda Pilot, to suspect trans issues even though it says Runs & Drives.  Staying only in 1st gear qualifies as "drives".  This is Remarketing and is dealer only

A repo open to public and stated owner as Resale Finance

A rather typical State Farm owned collision open to the public.

So, as an example Cleveland has 500 for public and 100 for dealer only.  When I look at the weekly list of what is upcoming I have gotten to the point where I just customize the list so all that I can see is what is open to the public.  This reduces my frustration and with 500 per week there are always a dozen or so that itnerest me.  If not, there will be another 500 next week!  

Also here in Ohio the big dealer auctions are limited to dealer only.  You must have a dealers license to enter.  There is a slight exception that each week they have some Repo Cars that are open to the public.  Those Repo cars are run through early and when they are done they clear the building.  If you dont have the right dealer barge then you have to leave.  

So when can I buy your latest Prius flip? I love these build threads!