Brand new owner of a Prius

Hello, I have just taken delivery of a new to me 2007 Prius in Silver Pine Mica. It has package #3 plus aftermarket HID lights. One owner car with 175K miles. It's in excellent shape in and out. I have had great support in another thread when I was searching to buy this car. Thank you, all. This thread is just to capture my first experiences with this vehicle. I am totally new to hybrids, never owned a Toyota, but have been working on my own cars since my teen days in the 80's. I am used to doing my own maintenance and most repairs. I've owned Volvos for the past 20 years. They've been good to me, but it's time to go a little greener and I really am not seeing any new Volvos that I like.

Right off the bat, I need to replace spark plugs. The original owner (it's a one owner car prior to me) didn't even realize it had spark plugs, but he did take the car to be serviced, so it may have had plugs changed, but we are not sure. So I just got some Denso OE plugs for it and will throw them in shortly. Are the original plugs Denso? I want to keep things as close to original as possible. I will also post in maintenance forum and also in modifications as this car has aftermarket HID lights and I am not sure I want to keep them.

Thank you for having this great community. I have gotten so much from online Volvo community (and have given back) that I really wouldn't want to own a car that lacked this type of thing.

 

Thank you, I will definitely register on toyota.com. My HID lights are definitely aftermarket bulbs/starter (whatever it's called) in a OEM halogen reflector. Hence, no leveling. Previous owner (who owned the car since new) said he really wanted HID lights, but at the time of purchase this was the one he could make a good deal on and so he bought it and HID installed aftermarket. He said he has no regrets, but I am not happy with the prospect of blinding oncoming traffic. I'll explore this as I settle into this car. I have not driven it much yet as I only just got it properly registered a few hours ago. I am about to change the plugs just in case, but I will first check the Toyota site.

Thanks again!

 

Well, I just turned over 5K miles on my new-to-me 2007. It now has 180K miles on the clock. The average MPG according to Fuelly is 48.9 MPG in 10 fuel ups. That's about 500 miles per tank (I may have not started logging on Fuelly right away, so maybe 11 fuel ups). Quite a bit of that mileage was on the highway (40% - 50%).

I am very impressed and delighted with this car. It is a joy to drive, has lots of room for passengers and cargo, lots of little storage compartments (two glove boxes?! yes, please!). I like the way it handles and accelerates and some of the criticisms I read before I bought it about the steering feeling "disconnected" from the road are bunk. It feels fine. I owned European cars most of my life with the exception of Mazda and Honda/Acura for a little while in the late 80s. Those Honda/Acura and Mazda experiences of the 80's did not make me a Japanese car fan. Yes, they were very reliable and ran great, but they had horribly uncomfortable seats, bad ergonomic design in many ways, felt chinsy in construction. I liked them fine, but did not love them. I went back to a Euro maker (Volvo) once I got a family and a child. Not that Volvo is flawless (far from it), but I felt some of the human elements were handled better. Not the least of which is shade tree maintenance by design. I remained cold towards Asian car makers.

This Prius has really turned many of these feeling around. I think it is a very well designed and thought-out car. It may be because Toyota really put extra effort into Gen 2 to establish dominance in the hybrid market (which I think they did). This Corolla class car really has a lot more to it than a Corolla.

So now I am about to change the oil. Going to use Mobile 1 5W30 and a Toyota filter. Still to do: change both coolants. I have the tools and fluids necessary, but am still a bit chicken to do it. Afraid to introduce air into the system. I have the vacuum setup and everything, still have a bit of fear to overcome on this one. Been working on my cars since early 80's, so not a newbie, but have never worked on a cooling system that does not purge the air as it runs.

I also want to express gratitude for this forum and people participating and adding to the knowledge. I hope to contribute as much as I can. It is my firm belief that this type of support is essential to keep older cars on the road. And doing that helps environment by reducing the demand for new vehicles being built. I try to keep my cars running as long as I can.

Cheers!

 

Thank you so much about the warning. Yes, things like brakes and cooling systems are so simple in normal cars, but in Prius it's necessarily much more complicated. I have not had to look at brakes yet, but when I do Iwill definitely keep this in mind and do a lot of reading and asking questions. I am not assuming I know how to do it just because I've done it for the past 35 years...

I haven't used it yet, but I bought this one from Amazon.

 

I already have a mini-VCI cable. Also have a bluetooth OBDII dongle and TorquePro app on my phone. Have not used the Techstream yet. I have a dedicated laptop now, but it's Windows 10. I have been reading about making Techstream and mini-VCI drivers work on 64 bit Windows. Apparently it's possible. I want to keep this laptop Windows 10 for various reasons.