Dealership transaxle fluid change nightmare

"I would have been on edge waiting for it to blow up from there on....every smell.....every sound....."

You hit the nail on the head there I just could not see myself continuing to pay for this car after that. I drove it a total of 80 miles since the incident and I just don't think it's right anymore. I can smell the faint smell coming from the vents still which might be transmission fluid burning off but I looked all over the exhaust and they did clean off all of the fluid with a hose.

I already have serious real deal OCD and there is just no way I could handle this. Every noise, smell, jerk, loss of power, any weirdness, I would spend the rest of my time with that car constantly trying to detect whether or not something was going wrong. I just simply don't want to live life that way with my OCD. I come from a history of driving 17+ year old vehicles. This Prius was the very first car I ever owned that was younger than 17 years old. I thought I was done with breaking down on the side of the road and missing work. I am confident that either the dealership crammed 6.5 quarts under high-pressure or did something even dumber and won't admit it, either way I am confident that they know they COULD have caused long-term damage.

Luckily I did want to upgrade to leather seats and I was actually about to buy clazzio covers, thank God I didn't.

As to when I plan on changing the transaxle fluid in this one? 30,000 miles it's just that I will certainly do it myself.

The dealership may have "won" this battle, but I intend on leaving reviews everywhere, escalating with Toyota corporate, talking to everyone I know basically just telling them what happened and how I was treated. I of course will never go back. I can pretty much guarantee you they will lose money in the long run because of this.

 

It was definitely thick red darkish transmission fluid. I promise I will post pictures shortly when I get them off my phone.

Coolant levels were nominal during all of this. If anything it looks like the coolant level was right on the L when it overheated and it did seem like it went to above the H when it cooled down but then it lowered it again some more to in the middle

EDIT Just found out I can upload straight from he phone! I have a video too which it won't let me upload. It was hard to get pictures and it was hectic on the highway. Most of the transmission fluid had burnt off by this point and the inverter was extremely hot to the touch but did not appear to have fluid on it so I did not take a picture of it. You can't really see the fluid in any of my other pictures it's just too dark in there they did not come out well. Also I checked the engine compartment religiously before I left the dealership and there was absolutely no fluid in there before the overheat and incident. So the transmission somehow expelled this fluid while driving at highway speed

 

I absolutely swear that I checked the car for like 25 minutes in the dealership parking lot before I drove off after the service was done and there was no fluid anywhere. All of that transmission fluid and trust me it's a lot more than it looks in the picture was literally expelled from the transmission as I was driving at highway speed and it happened all at once, I could feel it happen, extreme loss of power and just a feeling I'd never felt before, and not 10 seconds later I got hybrid system overheat as if the transmission had lost all fluid at once and ran dry at 80mph for 10 seconds. The car shut off and would not start for 30 min plus, no codes.

The car has not driven right since, though they claim it is. I ran the transmission for 30 minutes at more than double the fluid pressure and then 10 seconds empty I think after something blew from the pressure of too much overheated fluid. That transmission is fucked I think.

I was only at highway speed for 3 minutes before it blew or whatever, the rest of the trip was 45mph.

There was also fluid all over the ground that I did not notice until I was already in the tow truck and the car had been moved

 

No I just wish I could get down to the truth for curiosities sake. Someone else can determine if that car will make it 250k on that scorched fluid they never replaced, only drained, at least from what they say, when I asked them how many quarts for sure are in the transaxle they said that there is no way to know how much fluid is in a Prius transaxle for sure not even a ballpark estimate I asked them how many millimeters it was below the fill hole, they say that you do not measure transmission fluid levels that way.

Nobody knows how much fluid is in the transmission right now and weather is new or scorched and left over from when they overfilled it.

I still want to document this with corporate Toyota, I have heard of them giving rebate checks or free accessories for the new vehicle for people in similar situations to mine where they ended up trading in their vehicle due to a dealership service mistakes.

Maybe I'll buy a Carfax on the vin five years from now to see what happened to it