New owner with a question

Hi Cruisin', welcome to PriusChat! The best thing to do is mix it up. Don't just get on the interstate and set the cruise control. Take some side roads and enjoy the drive. Drive through some towns instead of whizzing by them.

Since you have no direct control over the engine, but it always runs above 42 mph, try to get some time below that speed. Try not to do any emergency braking (always good advice). The idea is to not run the engine at a constant speed for a long time.

Congratulations!

 

Yes, you should be fine by mixing up the speeds. It there are hills in your area of Northern Utah, going up and down grades should provide the variations needed. If the highway is completely flat, swiching between 55 and 65 every now and then should do the trick.

Time permitting, Bill's idea to take side roads in super best. Depending on your destination, maybe you could take the Bryce Canyon, Zion route.

Anyway, my main reason for adding my comments is to suggest you temporarily change your name from Cruisin' to Varyin' just for the break in period. Then you can change it back to Cruisin'

 

I had a minivan pull directly in front of me, perpendicular, without warning on my second day as a Prius owner. I had to slam on the brakes and, in fact, skidded a little to avoid not hitting the dumbo. Luckily, I was only going about 30 mph, but I had less than two car lengths to stop. I mean, the guy didn't even look - just darted out into oncoming traffic without warning.

What kind of damage could that have done? I was very upset about the brake slamming stop because of the stuff in the manual about avoiding such. Have I harmed my engine? Granted, I fnot using the brakes at that moment would have caused much more damage to the engine (and my face), but I'm still worried about the likely damage caused by this incident and I've had much newby aingst over it.

 

Concerns about the break in period should be taken with a grain of common sense. One school of thought is that most modern cars do not even need a break in period. Engines have been tested and run at the factory and while the car has been in transport to the dealership.
Yet, things like engine rings and valves do need time to set. The electronics on most cars these days need running time to set and adjust themselves as well. Thus the concerns for variable speeds instead of constant speeds.
One thing about sudden or emergency braking. The front pads and rotors need time to "match" each other.
New pads are not a perfect fit to the rotors, over time the wear down a bit and make a better fit.
Any time the brakes are applied in a hard or sudden stop there is the risk of warping the rotors. If you feel the steering wheel wobbling when the brakes are applied you may have warped the rotors.
I'd be less concerned about having damaged the engine, the Prius shuts it's self off at a stop so it's use to shutting off and restarting.
Warped rotors are better than a hospital stay, or a damaged car, stay safe.

 

Thanks for all the good info. I haven't notice any vibrating when I brake, so I don't think I warped the roters.

It was funny today - I was waiting in the bank and I could see my Prius parked outside the glass windows. One after another, SUVs pulled into and out of the parking places on either side of my car. I was so worried they would dent the doors with their huge SUV doors. None of them did, though. I'm sure I will not worry a much about this sort of thing as time passes, but I had to laugh at myself at how nervous I got each time it happened. I just love the car. It is the best thing I ever bought. Ever.

 

Does your Base model have VSC? If so, what are your impressions of how it performed in your skid. I tried testing mine out in the snow, but the Nokian WR tires do pretty well by themselves, so not sure how much of a test it was.

Isn't the trim level "Base" missleading? You can get a "Base" all the way up to Pkg 6 with leather seats, NAV, Upgrade sterio, HID headlights and all.

 

Cruisin'
Sorry you had to abandon your trip plans, but I bet all that fog and accidents helped you to vary the speed of your engine real well. Glad you got home OK.

 

Very smart, Cruisin', very smart. A road trip should be fun, not anxiety producing looking at spun-out cars...

 

Forget all the hypermiler techniques for the first 1000 miles then you can go about improving your score in the pinball game that is Prius after run in.

 

Funny, Patsparks, that you refer to it as a pinball game. I've also used a similar analogy when describing how much fun it is to drive. I say it's like a video game - I KNOW I can do better on mileage this trip than the last.

Gotta love it.