4 years today...

I just paid off my DMV renewal and hit 90,000 miles on the same day, the 4th anniversary of buying my 2014 PiP. I bought it on an impulse when California was running out of HOV lane stickers for PHEVs. 0% financing helped sway me, too.

I've been very happy with it - wore through a set of slippery Bridgestone EP20s in time for the rainy season, replaced them with Michelin Defender A/S tires, which are wearing great.

Picked up a Yakima roof box, taken the Prius to Southern California twice, up the California coast countless times, up to Lake Tahoe even more times and endured a 160 mile round-trip commute 4x/month for a couple of months.

I wanted the leather interior, but couldn't find one in stock anywhere. I told myself I'd buy those leather covers when mine got stained, but I ScotchGarded the seats as soon I got the car home, and since then, everything from sand, mud, coffee and milk have come off with a damp cloth and a bit of blotting.

Weathertech mats were a godsend at the beach, in muddy ski hill parking lots and during the rainy season. The stock carpet mats were flimsy!

I was worried about the flat tire kit killing the TPMS sensors and made my own TPMS-safe flat-tire kit with a compressor, can of slime, and a patch/plug kit. I'd thought about getting a donut spare once I got the roof box, but haven't gotten around to that yet.

I'm going to look for a new DVD for the SatNav; some new streets don't show up on the map.

Here's to another (hopefully) 4 more years at least.

 

I don't - that was a picture from while on vacation. I took about a 4-5 mpg hit with the box on, luckily I'm tall enough that I can get my arms around the box with not too much hassle. Putting the box and racks on and taking them off takes about 10 minutes.

 

Nope, I have a mechanic who doesn't like 10K on the Toyota oil filters - he's seen some of them start to disintegrate. Instead of a tire rotation at 5K and another rotation and oil change at 10K intervals, I do an oil change and tire rotation at my mechanic - and his price is less than half of the dealer's 10K service.

He did mention seeing Priuses burning oil at 100K, it's worth checking your oil mid-interval.

 

Update: Just checked my oil and tires -- oil was at the fill mark after 7800 miles since the last change.

 

No real changes -- yet. I think with my extended warranty and California's laws, I have a 129K mile warranty.

 

I bought Sportrack SR 1002 racks, as they were significantly cheaper than the "name brand" racks. (Sportrack is a sub-brand of one of the major rack/box makers). They were $140 or so new, compare to a hundred or so more for Yakima or Thule racks. They make a little noise, but I don't keep them on all the time.

They install in about 10 minutes with a hex key. You need to measure where they're going to go (the manual has specific dimensions on where the racks need to mount. I lay them out on the car roof, confirm with a tape measure, then tighten the racks. Locking caps go on afterwards.

My box is big but relatively light. I've got long arms and can manage it myself. The box goes on the rack, you loosen the knobs in the inside of the rack, slide hooks extending under the box over the rack bars, then tighten them down.

I can fit the adult's suitcases in the box, along with jackets and some smaller things. The kids' bags, coolers, etc then fit in the trunk, and I can get 4 people's worth of stuff in a car getting 46 mpg.