Should I replace the transmission fluid on my 2008 Prius with 250k?

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Check this extremely dated thread for photos (some have expired), and diagrams which will show you the jacking points on a gen2.

Jacking / Lifting points on your Prius | PriusChat

You can also reference the owner manual (in the glove box?), or find a copy here : Toyota Warranty & Toyota Manuals | Toyota Owners

 

Front and rear jacking points are shown in Owner's Manual. You can download pdf from Tech Info if the paper version has gone astray. It's pretty much self-evident, especially. The rear, you might want to consult the manual.

You want to have the car raised and level. There's a lot of ways to accomplish. Simplest might be to run the front onto ramps and raise the rear with a floor jack. Up to you.

My preference is to raise the whole car and settle onto safety stands, and I don't use the scissor jack locations. I use points inboard a bit, in the vicinity. If you're interested I can dig up a second gen link, it's Hobbit or someone that came up with the alternates.

FWIW, I use pretty much the same points on 3rd gen, the structure is very similar.

He only discusses alternate front safety stands. I do have alternate rear points I use as well. Here's a 3rd gen pic of the points, and I think it pretty much translates to 2nd gen:

 

Sorry, my photo did not work.

 

Ctrl - C (copy) + Ctrl - V (paste) ?

Assuming you're using winblows.

 

If it was jacking points, from 2009 Owner's Manual:



The front looks like centre point of a cross-beam, and the rear seems similar to 3rd gen, an body-coloured upside down pillar., just for'ard of the spare tire depression and aft of the rear axle.

 

Looks gruesome...

Old fluid doesn't look bad. Obviously colour change, but not super thick or whatever.

 

The spill can be zero, IF you're really careful. Fill with a funnel from above, it is going to start overflowing, somewhere between 3.5 and 4.0 quarts. I just watched from below, had my helper just shoot in small amounts once we were halfway through the last bottle. And kept a pan underneath.

 

With the car level, and filled till it overflowed, you have the level right, at the high end of the spec'd range.

 

Although I have often argued in favor of Prius transmission oil changes, I do partially agree with you. For those who don't plan on driving their car to an unusually high mileage, and who don't care what happens to it after they sell it, and who want to minimise their maintenance cost, an ATF change is not necessarily in their interests.

If I may pose a hypothetical Question: If someone wanted to drive their Prius ten million miles, preferably with few repairs, but also preferably without very high maintenance costs, would you recommend changing transmission fluid? If so, how often?

 

Disregarding the 10 million hyperbole, and just my 2 cents: at 10k miles, 50k, then every 100k miles.

 

My apologies, I think that didn't come across the way I intended. I didn't mean to hyperbole. I was attempting a Socratic argumentum ad absurdum.

If I may rephrase the question:
@Leadfoot J. McCoalroller, do you think it's not sensible to change the ATF no matter how many miles a Prius is driven? If otherwise, then how often do you think it would be sensible to change it?

 

Toyota says never change it- they are fairly expected to be balancing wear characteristics, expected lifetime, planned obsolescence and the environmental impact of the waste oil among other factors in their maintenance guideline consideration.

My observation is that things seem to have worked out pretty well for those Prius owners who never changed their ATF. This is in stark contrast to those who made the same decision regarding their traditional automatic transmission care.

However, I also recognize that there will still be some break-in while the Prius transaxle is in service, and that early in its life there will be a more rapid contamination of the ATF until that running-in is done. I believe that flushing out those break-in sourced contaminants is the primary benefit of an ATF change.

And so, I consider that it is generally worth changing the ATF once, somewhere around 50k miles. Doing this just once is doubling the care given to the transmission and also doubling the amount of waste oil generated.

I would never suggest that further or more frequent ATF changes wouldn't be a net benefit to the car's condition, but I am taking the position that it is disproportionately expensive in economic and environmental terms.

tl;dr It's worth doing once when the car has had a good running-in, and I can feel good about maintaining the car to a higher standard than others, and at the same time not overdo it.

 

I changed the fluid in my 2004 with a (2003 build date) last weekend. First time change, the 17 year old fluid was like black/purple water. Glad i changed it, so easy! Why not

 

At 388K I had the engine replaced in my son's 2006 with a 100K engine. The junkyard threw in the low mileage tranny for free. It's also easier to replace the engine and tranny as one unit. The mechanic doing the work told me the old tranny fluid was really dirty and stinky and should have been changed more often. But the original tranny was still working fine at 388K with the old dirty and stinky fluid. What more can you expect?

 

I second this motion. If it cost $2000 to replace the fluid then maybe think twice. But since it cost like under $50 why risk the acid buildup? Replace it. It will come out like thick India ink when it should be candy apple red.