New Owner: Squeal and Alignment issues

First go to a brake shop for a free brake inspection. In a traditional car the rotors can last a long time and you change the brake pads frequently. The Prius is not a traditional car, many people here can drive over 150K on the original pads, however because we use our traditional brakes very little our rotors get rusted to hell, the brake shops will tell you how many mm is on the front pads and rear shoes and if the rotors are rusted though or not, and pay them for the following 2 services: lubricate the front caliper slides and clean&adjust the rear drums.

Cleaning the brake dust and adjusting the rear drums always gets rid of the low speed choo choo sound I get at low speed, I do this every 40-50K miles. I find priuschat users always jump to replace the wheel bearings too quickly. Why spend hundreds of dollars if $30 can fix it. The caliper slides will dry out over time, especially in dry winter air, and you're going to want them to work in an emergency stop so its worth the small pocket change to have them lubed.

This will probably translate to twenty pounds (is it spelled quid), money well spent in my opinion. You will need the front end alignment as it sounds like the previous owner probably slid on ice and hit a curb pretty hard which isn't covered under warranty. If it doesn't get rid of the noise than you can always than have the wheel bearings replaced. Do it yourself, after all, Jeremy Clarkson says, "How hard can it be?"

 

These defects may or may not be covered by the warranty, only you can judge that by reading it. HOWEVER, the car should absolutely NOT have been sold in this condition. If these faults appeared on your drive home from the dealers, I would have turned around and taken the car back!

 

I think he bought it from a person, not a dealer, in America we call this a private party sale. The seller gets more for the car than he would trading it in (more work though) and the buyer saves money over buying from a dealership at retail price (more risky though, as this guy is finding out)

 

The OP clearly states he bought it from a Toyota dealer. In the UK we have trading standards law covering guaranties and that is the rout I would be taking,also if there are braking problems it is against UK law to sell an non road worthy vehicle and with emissions problems it should not have passed an MOT. It is not reasonable to expect the guaranty to only work at the place of purchase
The UK Prius does not have drum brakes. Tracking is strait forward as with most other cars, but a zero point calibration needs to be carried out on the steering as well. In the UK this can only be carried out generally by a dealer. The warning lights issue will be under Toyota's 100,000 mile 8year highbrid cover any dealer should sort this out FOC.

 

What area do you live in and witch dealer have you taken it to for the diagnostics.
Check the air filter "very easy to do" as it could possibly be blocked.
I have the same model and year as you.
Ask the dealer near your home how long since the last trouble code was cleared "this information is stored by one of the ECU's in the car". If a code was cleared recently this shows that the selling garage knew of a problem, and just cleared the code. The ECU stores this as distance travelled since code cleared.

 

Tucka I should have welcomed you to Priuschat.
Do not blame your problems on the car, they are great cars. I would get in touch with Toyota UK and explain the problems you are having with the selling dealer, after all you are only just out of the three year bumper to bumper guarantee, also buying from a main agent the car should come with a 12 month Toyota guarantee, and have been inspected to Toyota standards. Good luck and let us all know how things work out.

John