Bought salvage 2005 Prius with 35,000 miles

Well. yesterday I picked up the front clip of a Prius... It was the same color Blue.
I checked around and the next chance for a Prius clip was going to be 500 miles out...
I did insist is it was a COMPLETE clip, they would need to add the entire air filter box and assembly... They did not have one but the $2600 staring them in the face made for some quick calls and the air filter assembly will be mailed to me.
So I got every last thing I need...Look's like I will cut the frame and weld the entire front clip in place. I'll put a few photo's out when I do that.

Mr Uart..... Boy, something is very unusual..... I see the 3 different bar colors you have shown here.. First was Purple and above is first Blue and then green...
Now after careful examination ..ah............ well..... I have indeed 6 bars of purple.....?!
Them are NOT blue......... I will get a photo for you to judge yourself....

Now the scangauge is not showing any diagnostic codes....
I thought I read of a incident here through the threads about that very situation... But there are 100's of thousands of threads here.... I was just familiarizing myself with the Prius and different situations people were having and important recalls and such.
Im trying different search phrases but have not come up with that thread yet.
I'll go get a photo of those 6 purple bars im showing....

 

That's frost you see on everything...
The Great NaNook of the North has NOT left us here yet....

 

Quite the "Heat Wave" today!
Snow is Melting Good!

Well..... what the H.......ah......
Geeze.... dont know what to say...
That there Photo/s looks BLUE......
But when I looked at the MFD through my own eyes.... it looks PURPLE...
This is really perplexing... well I got to admit, I am wrong...
I should have never smoked that..........~
Well children, let that be a lesson to you...
Listen to Nancy or you could end up like me!

 

Toyota Prius is finished! I will have photo's in the morning... Took my time on it.
Reequipped with the HID headlights. Having a front clip of the same color really helped!

 

Ok, sorry about being late on these.

M8s- I paid $5400 back on 4-23- 2008 and picked it up 1-7-2011 !!!

I found a entire clip that was just tooooooo enticing.. Same color. I really could have gone much cheaper item by item but I would have to paint everything... And that is a big thing at least to me.

So I paid {hold on to your pants} $2700 !!!! yeah., i know...

But it had everything including the splash guards and engine covers. The entire filter assembly- - anything on the outside and fender all away around,. I got some nice doubles of things.
Did all the work myself.

Pulling out the radiator impact zone took some patience.. Eventually pulling it out and then from the passenger side pulling the radiator frame to that side to line up the upper and lower radiator mounts.
It was all close enough to get a nice hood shut and line up the lights.
I some riveting here and there.

It has 35,000 and is a # 7 ...so i got kinda lucky on that one!

One of the big things is the clip had the HID entire light assemblies which was very nice, no breakage.

So your looking at roughly $8100 ...... I did go a little better then I was first intending.

Time wise M8s I picked it up Jan 7 and had it together by May 10.. But I must admit this was at a super leisure rate.

Ok... before and after

as far as driving...I live deep in the bush and took it in town and on the old back roads as a test but i do not have all the registration work done on it yet.
So it is not really getting the 5th degree yet.
I can say I really like the ride though! Never had another Prius to compare to.

 

Samaruf,
I always have intended to keep it. I am one of those gas miser type of guys that likes keeping the MPG.

Now the fun part will be comparing it to the Honda Civic Hybrid {2005} I have but is out of commission .. very poor engineering on their CVT {constant velocity transmission} actually 2003 - 2005 are all failures waiting to happen in short order. Honda has the deaf ear completely on this issue... I guess no one has died yet...
Im already thinking the Prius Hybrid battery is a major improvement to the honda.

It will be fun to run the Prius!

 

Thank you Hal W. and Samaruf... Its not "ball bearing" accurate like the commercial. . But to the eye it is not bad. If you really look close, the width between every part is not exact. But it is close and accurate enough to shut the hood and have all components line up fairly well.

I think the major part was getting the front radiator frame lined up enough to allow everything else to fall in place.
Tell you the truth, it was rather easy... But there is some cars that you would not want to deal with..
I am noticing you do NOT want the accident to extend to the 2 frame rails to any degree of damage.. This would be definite jump up in skill and specialized equipment.

Overall, i would do it in a heartbeat again... you just got o check out the salvage car real close... sometimes the worse looking mess is really a diamond in the rough.
Trying to figure the force and dynamic's of the crash can help also to determine salvage worthiness.
Overall, nice easy job!

 

Just one from behind.

Well I am a house building/ renovator and I have many cross over items and some specialized equipment.i am certainly no where even near a body shop but i have a lot of good tools and equipment to work with.

If you only pick a salvage with limited damage, you can limit the amount of equipment you need.I guess the trick is knowing what "limited damage" and "extensive damage" are...