Emergency Stop!

what is a gen V?

 

A Gen V?? What's that?

Anyway, it looks like some stuff is fine and other stuff is super corroded. This looks like something that should be covered by warranty. You have parts that look like they've been soaked in sulfuric acid bolted to parts that look almost new.

 

Months ago your 2017 Prius had only 35k miles?

 

Was this car flooded at some point? Torch the brakes going down a mountain? Not that either would fully account for the situation, just trying to make sense of this.

It's such a weird presentation of conditions.

 

Prius Prime is sometimes called a 2nd generation plug-in. It is based on the 4th generation just as the PiP was based on the 3rd generation. Same engine, frame, etc as Gen 4. Just has some minor styling tweaks, bigger traction battery (of course), and a sprague clutch between the engine & transaxle that lets it go faster in EV and use both MGs rather than just MG2 to power the wheels.

Everyone I know just calls it the Prime, but that's going to have to change now that Toyota has released the RAV4 Prime.

 

Hmmmm.
Interesting.
A couple of things.....

1. THIS is one of the (many) reasons that I NEVER recommend an OEM extended warranty. If you have a wobbler (as this case is) sometimes you have to hold the dealer's feet to the fire to get them to cover a repair.
Toyota is usually better about fessing up when they mess up IN THIS AREA and there might be some indication that they have this time.
UNFORTUNATELY you're seeing other people....and having the repair done at DARCARS of Frederick, MD, on Rt.85 might have been unwise.

First thing I would do is review your records and the warranty and maintenance guide.....because this MAY not have been caused by abuse or neglect. other than living at or near 44 degrees North by 73 degrees...presumably West.
You didn't say, and no...that's not me being a typical westerner.
If you lived near 44 degrees north by 73 degrees east you would need a much different form of transportation.

The second thing I would do is VERIFY that you have an OEM extended warranty and then review all of the mice type in this document.
I do not consider rotors and hardware to be a "wear" item and my finely honed Spidey senses tell me that either you're being under-served by your stealership, or DARCARS of Frederick, MD, on Rt.85 is soaping you down a little or both.

Make sure you keep all of the parts because if you've been following the maintenance guide precisely enough to satisfy your end of the warranty then thing number third might be to dump all of those parts at your stelaership and demand an accounting.

This might also be an NTSB beef - although I sorta doubt it.
Your latitude and longitude suggest that you live either in New England or Moiynkum District, Kazakhstan.
Not judging...but the former has lotsa retired folks driving Primes...or G4 Priuses.....which is pretty much the same car and probably uses pretty much the same brakes.

They do weird and interesting things up in the frozen north such as using salt and sand on their roads.
Again....not judging but I think that your dealership MIGHT have contributed to the early demise of your brakes.
THAT's not an NTSB beef....it's a dealership error or problem.

Good Luck!

 

A technical request to the OP: could you revise your location (in Avatar), to something a little more colloquial? I mean, this is not a Breaking Bad Blueray Barrel Easter Egg; it's Priuschat, lol. I was wondering if you're in some rust-belt region, looked at the avatar, and oh yeah...

 

The only hard part is the profile field cuts off the length before you can see if the longitude is east or west. But given one of the choices is in the US and the other is in Kazakhstan, I have my guess.

Google Maps

Google Maps

Rotor rust seems to be affected by how often the car is driven. When it's there a short time, it is easily scrubbed off and the pads can remove it when the car is next driven. If it sits there longer, it becomes entrenched and abrasive and eats the pads instead.





Happened to my Gen 1. Perhaps significantly, for a lot of the time I had the Gen 1 I was bicycle commuting and not driving it much. My Gen 3 has been driven more often and the rotors have stayed quite clean, but I have a bit of a bad feeling what I will find in my first post-Covid inspection.

I once looked at some brakes on a friend's SUV and saw that one pad was down to the metal, and said "you definitely need to order pads and a rotor, but you may as well drive (sparingly) until they come in, as you've already trashed the old ones anyway."

It seems it only took a couple days to further wear the pad backing plate thin enough that it got folded in half and thrown out of the caliper, leaving the piston to touch the rotor directly, and get cocked slantwise in the bore, so the job turned into rotor, pads, and caliper. I had never seen that happen before.

 

All I can imagine is that your roads--sorry, I cannot divine your location--get treated with a corrosive compound during winter and it stays on your wheels for extended periods. I would get complete set of rotors and pads and try as best I could to rinse off the road salt from the wheels as often as possible during the winter months. I don't see any case for a warranty claim--nothing is defective, just extensive corrosion due to road treatment. If you do get new brakes, pay attention to the break-in period. Don't be in a hurry to take off on your 600 mile road trip until the new brakes are bedded-in.

 

+1

That amount of corrosion is incredible to me. Here's a current pic of my 7 year old C-Max original brakes; zero service or maintenance (not proud of that last fact).

 

Yeah I see mention of "NY" in his info.

 

Assuming this is all due to road salt in upstate NY area, here are what my 2017 PRIME rotors and brakes looked like last fall. That is after 2 full winters and 36kmiles on NE roads just as bad as your roads are in terms of road salt. Yeah, road salt corrodes, but not as bad so fast as I am seeing on your car. Given time, I am sure mine would have looked just yours, but I hope it takes more than 3 winters.

Just curious, if your dealer is in upstate NY, Della Toyota, Plattsburgh, NY, why did you take your care to DARCARS of Frederick, MD?
I would be interested to know how much the entire job cost, for I will be doing that at some point in future, hopefully much later than your car, but I know it is inevitable. If my other Toyota is any indication, anywhere 7-8 years, 70-80kmiles is when I needed whole brake/rotor jobs.

 

Have you done an emergency stop in this car before? the ABS system makes strange sounds compared to other cars I've driven. It's not a low frequency pulsing, but more of a grinding noise. But a cloud of dust is not normal.

Older Toyotas often get stuck pistons in the brake calipers. Lubricating the slide pins won't fix it, the calipers need to be rebuilt or replaced. It would be unusual for it to happen so quickly, but maybe you got extremely unlucky? A stuck piston makes the brake pads drag, wear away quickly, and sometimes overheat.