2008 HV Battery performance, SKS key question., ATF WS Fluid Question.

Dear Priuschat,

Firstly I'd like to say Hello and that from everything I've seen this is quite the unique site related to the car.

Today I purchased a used 2008 Prius in what appears to be fantastic condition. The mileage to me was a little on the high side, sitting at 169k miles, mostly highway through Northern California. *One Owner Car* The owner had purchased the 100k Toyota Warranty and like clock work the car went into the dealership every 5k miles for Oil and Filter/Tire rotations and "Recommended maintenance performed" - Which will lead into a question down below.

I did my homework on the internet before making a decision and purchasing a Prius, most of my knowledge came straight from priuschat.com which is awesome. After driving the car mostly all day today to get the feel for the car, I'll just simply say, what a smooth ride, I am enjoying the hell out of it. Even with all the hate the car gets for being slow on the power side and not fun. I say after just a day that is not the case. I love it.

Introduction aside: I have a few questions that I'm having a slightly hard time trying to get the exact answer to my questions hence why I am doing this write-up.

1) Looking at the Toyota scheduled maintenance guide, it leaves me unsure if the ATF WS fluid was ever changed. If any of you have experience with the dealership and this fluid, would you assume it was at least changed at least once in the 169k miles this car has?

**The car owner did not know, he was the type of guy that brings it into the shop and assumes all is tip-top with the warranty**

2) 12V Rear battery: The owner was unsure if this was ever changed. The battery takes a little bit to get to obviously, so I was going to look for a date on it but I could not find anything without dismantling it. Would the dealership replace this if it has not died? Should I replace it as better safe than sorry?

3) The SKS key does not unlock the door, or able to start the car via proximity. I have to physically insert it into the "slot" to start the car. The unlock/lock buttons on it work howerever. This isn't a huge deal, but the original owner said the proximity never worked. Is there some sort of easy fix I may be able to do to enable the SK proximity starting/locking/unlocking?

*SOLVED* With more Priuschat searching, I found theres a black button under the wheel that was pressed. I simply depressed it and viola... easy fix for this Prius noob. But it strikes me odd that the original owner drove the car for over 100k miles and never tried to solve this issue with the SK.


4) Does my HV battery sound OK to you experienced Prius drivers? Read below.

The drive home with the car on the freeway yielded about 47 MPG. Seems great.
In town however, and maybe this is due to short trips and not enough experience with the "Consumption" screen, but, it appears the HV Battery *drains* from what appears to be *80%* to *20%* rather quickly with the headlamps on, and AC running while sitting idle. In a 20 minute span.

The drive back home did appear to charge the HV battery indicator upwards to *50% or 60%* after about 10 minutes of stop-and-go driving back to home.

Thank you for the response, and I hope I chose the correct sub-forum to ask these questions.

 

Thanks for the simple responses JC. The key problem was solved per my edit above. It was a simple "KEY" button under the wheel that apparently the original owner had no idea existed for over 100k miles.

 

The maintenance schedule shows engine and inverter coolant replaced at 100k. I'm still assuming I should do this now at 169k.
Fuel injector system flushed at 120k on the carfax.

So other than inverter coolant and transaxle, what other fluids should I know about?

 

So I called 3 shops about the transaxle fluid change.

One shop, the guy said I was crazy to change that as it's "Lifetime" and putting in new fluid would cause more harm than good. I hung up with that guy.

Called Toyota Dealership #1 - A Random Service Tech suggested that I do not need to replace it.

Called Toyota Dealership #2 - And they said that they would replace it for me, as they have done a few replacements around 100k.

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From what I understand, the transaxle fluid is the reddish liquid ATF WS fluid via a simple drain and fill. In Prius Transaxle/Transmission mean the same thing. It was confusing to me at first, and maybe it's confusing some technicians when I say Transaxle over Transmission? Can someone correct me on this if I'm wrong.