Accident in Prius

My Prius has been an accident magnate for some reason.
I had a bunch of them all minor once. Couple of them Hit and run's while my car was parked in a parking lot and another a low speed hit from behind.
In this one though I was lucky to escape completely unharmed.

2 lane State highway I was driving on ( 55 MPH speed limit) becomes 65 MPH Interstate highway. Traffic was not very heavy. But there was a truck burning rubber ahead of me. I moved to left lane to pass the truck. There was another car in front of me and both of us accelerated to highway speed and suddenly the car in front of me swerved and cut in the right lane ahead of the truck. And then I saw three boulders two about 12 inches and another about 8 inches in size spread across my lane, probably fallen over from a construction truck.

There was no way I could have stopped in that distance and not a way to avoid them completely. I just avoided tires running over those rocks.

I pulled over and looked under the car for a minute or so. I did not find any leaks. I drove on a further 20 miles to work. Normal driving position of the steering had shifted about 15 degrees. I knew it needed work.

Couple hours later I saw fluid leaks under the car and drove immediately to a good mechanic near office I had worked with. I was lucky to reach there as there was a constant stream by the time I reached there.

It seems the transaxle housing had cracked and my driving of about 25 miles had vibrations had opened up the crack.

I had only liability insurance on the car as it already has 165,000 trouble free Miles ( other than earlier minor accidents). But the car was so reliable, I decided to go with salvage transmission. Later on after a more careful inspection it also appeared that suspension cross member has a small rip and was bent which had caused the steeing shift. So even that had to be replaced.

The mechanic I work with is reliable and honest guy. He had not worked on Prius before. But did a good job getting info from his sources and doing the complete work.

Now I have the car back after spending 2650 $.

700 $ Transmission
500 $ steeering crossmember.
1250 $ labor
200 $ supplies including Toyota Transaxle fluid and Inverter coolant.

I have driven the car for 100 Mi now and every thing looks good so far.

I am keeping my fingers crossed and hope to use it another 50000 Mi to get my money's worth back.

 

Unfortunately I do not know how the rocks got there. I just saw those like 20-30 ft ahead of me at speed of 65-70. I am just assuming they fell out and someone was not careless to use those as chock for a disabled vehicle.

I was very lucky to just escape with damage to the car. The outcome could have been much worse.

BTW I did call Highway patrol and reported those.

 

I have now driven the car for 300 Mi since repair. Everything looks good. MPG reported on MFD 55.1 which is better than what I used to get previously by at least 2 or 3 Mi in similar weather.

So looks like everything is fine at least from repairs point of view. I will get more comfortable with transmission after driving about 5K miles or so, it being a salvage one.

Mechanic

Tom Stuart
Hillside Service Station
113 Columbus Ave,
Valhalla NY 10595.

 

Mechanic found the salvage transaxle. Actually getting one took a lot of time. It was the fifth one which he got delivered. At least three had wires cut where they come out of housing rather than just separating at the connector which is just a foot or so away. Only one motor has a terminal box on the housing. Other motor just has a connector a foot or so away. ( Like a foot long tail).

Tom ( my mechanic) said he did not make any money on the transmission or the suspension crossmember. He negotiated price for both. I had seen a couple of the transaxles and had almost given up hope that my Prius will ever get fixed.