Stupid Question of the Month: How can I safely rotate a front tire?

That's not correct: you may have read it here, but we've got lots of threads on PriusChat and you can find both correct and incorrect information. If you identify the thread(s) where you read that, we can add clarifying information there so other people don't get misled the same way you did.

You do not need to "start the car (with foot on brake)" to shift into N—and in fact, for the exact reason you've already given, you shouldn't want to. Just take the car to "ON" (that is, two power button presses without touching the brake). You can shift to N then with no problem, and nothing is ever going to start.

Or, simply jack up both front wheels. If the transmission is in Park, when you spin one front wheel the other one will spin the opposite way. It will take a bit more effort than just shifting to N and spinning one wheel, but you might be able to diagnose your noise either way.

 

Yeah, that's one of those pieces of basic Prius knowledge that's in the owners' manual somewhere, and it's all over this forum, but it bears repeating because it's sort of never in the exact thread somebody's looking at with a question.

In old cars that had a key you would turn, the key pretty much always had the following positions marked around it:

OFF ACC ON START

Some cars put ACC on the other side of OFF, like: ACC OFF ON START

You'd take out the key in OFF position when you were done with the car.

If you turned the key to ACC you could listen to the radio and maybe use a few other ACCessories.

If you turned it to ON, you could do that, and also the dash instruments would wake up, and you could use blinkers and wipers and stuff, but not drive the car.

If you turned it to START the car would start and you could drive it (the key would spring back to ON, but the car would be running).

The ON state (without starting the car) is also usually what you want if you're connecting a scan tool to retrieve trouble codes and such. It was sometimes also called "KOEO" (key ON, engine off).


In a Prius with the pushbutton, they correspond like this. Starting with the car OFF:

One button push without the brake takes you to ACC.

Next button push without the brake takes you to ON. Instruments light up, but you will not see the word READY.

Next button push without the brake takes you OFF again.

One button push with the brake takes you to READY, where you can drive the car. The word READY lights up on the dash then.


Do you happen to remember where you found threads on here saying you had to be READY to shift to neutral? If you can point us to those we can fix them so other people don't stumble on the wrong information.