Buying a used gen 2 for $4,000

If the dealership tells you it's a transmission fluid flush, RUN! It's supposed to be drain and refill. There's many posts on how to do the drain & refill yourself. If not, Toyota of Bellevue charges about $125 for the service. I believe Toyota of Renton charges around $115.

Front brakes at 8mm is pretty good. According to the Toyota multipoint inspection report from my recent oil change, 7mm to 12mm is considered good and in the green. For the rear drum brakes, 3mm is good too. 3mm-4mm is in the the green. 2mm is in the yellow and 1mm is in the red. I'd recommend a brake flush if the Prius hasn't gotten one before. How are the tires?

 

I would look through the tire thread to see what people like. My tires are still new so I haven't really looked into tires yet. I usually get Michelin tires from Costco for my cars. If you do end up getting them at Costco, wait until they have the $70 off coupon.

 

There's plenty of room to reach the drain/fill bolts from underneath after taking off the splash guards. You'll need a long tube and funnel to pour the new fluid in from above the engine bay. Tip: loosen the fill bolt first. It's its stuck for some reason but you've already drained the old fluid.......

 

You would need to run the car before the battery SOC will start dropping. It shouldn't do it while it's off

 

If the module fails, you would have a hybrid warning.

You can find out a little more about battery rebuilding at hybridautomotive.com. They sell a grid charger that will help you rebuild and balance the battery. It's a little more involved than just replacing a module.

 

Not entirely true if the battery is going bad. Nickel metal hydride batteries will self-discharge when they get closer to their limits, and the car would still be powering the smart key system, so that's a small charge that is demanded even when the car is powered off.

 

The cars ecu does not register the hv battery SOC when the car is off, will need to be powered on before it can detect the lower SOC.

 

When the car is OFF, the power is supplied by the 12 V battery for the likes of SKS, ECUs, the accumulator pump, etc.

The other thing to bear in mind is that there can be a lag with the Energy Monitor display, so for example if you did the last 200 yds in EV and then switched off, the battery might not be updated with the current SOC until the car was restarted later, which would then appear to show a sudden drop while the car was OFF.