Sudden gen 1 transaxle failure

Letting your local dealer overcharge you for simple maintenance through the years does not buy you a sympathetic ear.

How many miles are on the car ? What were the terms of the extended warranty (miles/years) ?

I'm not quite sure what the connection is between inverter and transmission failure, but hopefully Patrick Wong or one of the other Prius mechanical gurus will chime in shortly. Your thread is unfortunately sounding like one more warning on top of a growing list, that the transaxle fluid should be changed more often than Toyota has recommended. I have learned to take this fluid change as seriously as I do the engine oil change.

 

About the only other thing you can do is, when discussing the problem with Toyota, make it clear that your 1000s of friends on PriusChat are hoping that Toyota will make an exception in your case. Keep after them. Polite persistence. Also, stress that you bought a new one so they should be lovin' you.

it has worked in the past (though not always) and we cna only hope it will continue to work in the future.

A second opinion might reveal that replacement of both the inverter and transaxle are not required. Hard to say from a distance.

Even though I am a strong proponent of frquent transaxle fluid changes, in fact we aren't sure that it can stave off such failures. It is simply the only maintenance option available to owners.

 

Hi ...Nora,

The common failure that has been reported here on Prius Chat in the first generation Prius is an insulation failure of one of the motors in the Transmission. The guess is that the excessive metal load in the fluid is abrading the motor winding insulation until a short occurs. The common symptom is a buzzing noise from the transmission. Usually the inverter survives operating into a short, if the car is not driven excessively in this condition.

The second generation Prius has much less metal load in the transmission fluid with wear, and so far almost unheard of motor failure. So, Toyota apparently has improved things. But that does not help you out.

At that service life, you should consider water pump, belts, traction battery, starter battery and brakes as other costs that may occur at any time. Besides the usual tires costs. Altogether one miight hold $4000 in a savings account for such issues.

There are some shops who have done this repair outside of Toyota. But many times Toyota has chipped in on the dealarship repair. Making it much more palatable. Still, personal timing is everything on how painfree such events are.

As far as transmission life being only 113K miles, well, I have never had an automatic transmission car that has acheived that previously. Maybe I am tough on transmission - maybe Chicagoland traffic is. So, I say not-bad for new technology. There are stories of long transmission life on both the 1st and 2nd Generation Prius, however.

 

You must be hell on transmissions. I've had several vehicles well into the 150's without automatic transmission failure on any that I owned (including two K-cars.) Honestly, like the engine I don't expect a transmission to fail in the vehicle's lifetime if I maintain it. If it does then I chalk it up to being a weak component and/or weak point of the design. With the Gen1 it seems to be a weak point of the design.

Now many domestic made vehicles in past decades had transmissions that weren't good for more than about 80k...but that's why I wouldn't buy them new anyway, poor design. I did have an F-150 with a recently replaced transmission before I bought it at about 80k, but that was expected in that vehicle. That one set the previous owner back $1400 for a rebuild in the mid 90's. Knowing how quickly full sized domestic trucks were going through transmissions, one of my criteria for buying a used truck was a recently rebuilt transmission (that and all the oil seals and gaskets replaced so it wasn't leaking fluid like a sieve as other domestics did.)

As to Nora's situation, I wish you the best. This is something Toyota should be looking to help you get done at cost. The price differential for that is probably north of 50%. The markup on Toyota parts and labor is horrendous. Considering the Toyota part that fails is typically one with a known flaw, it's not possible to justify the price premiums for an inferior part either.

 

Hello,

I am considering buying a 2001 Prius cause I want to be green, but have little money to spend. The car I am planning to purchase has 100,800 miles on it and has had the battery replaced @80k.

My question after reading all this...is it really worth buying a hybrid car that has so many expensive issues so early in life? Does 50mpg cars really save you any money? Or is it new gen hype?

I understand we all want to be green and clean, but I don't want to live in my car and beg for money either...ya know?

Really I'm torn between a Sport Trac with 124,000 miles and huge amounts of room and a Prius with 100,800 and environmentally 'better'.

 

The first generation Prius is not as reliable as the second generation model. If I was purchasing an used Prius, I would not even consider the first generation.

I would consider an older Corolla/Camry/etc as an used car if you're looking for cars in that price range.

 

Implicit is "today" since many NHW11s were bought years ago when we were faced with a different set of economies and many used NHW11s had fewer miles (mine now has added 70,000 miles.) But things do age and wear out.

There is one other area where a used NHW11 may make sense today as a 'project car.' We have a lot of information about the NHW11 including excellent Toyota maintenance manuals and now nine years of user experience. What this means if someone wants to do something special with Prius, some really experimental stuff, it is best to experiment with an older NHW11 and then see about fitting it to the new model.

Now our family has an NHW11 and a ZVW30 but I still commute in my NHW11. My wife's car works great in her hands and my NHW11 works great in mine. I've had over three years to optimize my route and driving plus I use my Graham scanner to keep it in the high BSFC range. But if we swapped vehicles, my fuel savings would likely be marginal and she would soon be getting 'not so good' mileage and complaining about 'that old worn out car!'

Now I've ordered the parts to do some radical things with my NHW11 Prius. Things I didn't want to try when this was our only Prius. But now I can with the option of backing them out or dealing with 'opps' and not having to worry about getting into work. I can deal with the potential failures that any experiment entails. Of course I didn't mention there are only a handful of Prius experimenters in North America and some of them are still playing with the NHW20. <GRINS>

So I'm not ready to declare the NHW11 'dead' but that is what we did with our 2001 Echo that had less than 30,000 miles (her former car.) Her Echo was and continues to work just fine (I know the guy who bought it.) But my wife's 2010 Prius works super good.

Bob Wilson