Call me a glutton for punishment

Bought another Gen1 today, lol. That makes 7. This one is supposed to have a good HV battery - if so, that alone is worth more than I paid for it. It's been wrecked in the front, so I need to see how badly. If the frame/core support/aprons are all fine, then the front end off my gray parts car will make it good, with a quicky paint job from gray to green. If not, the battery comes out to fix one of my other cars, plus any other parts worth saving.

Has anyone here done an engine/transaxle removal? My gray parts car is actually nice looking; if the swap isn't that hard, I could just put this engine in it.

 

Drove up to Dallas today to pick up this Prius - wow is it clean. That's what I like about these cars compared to other used cars - so many of the original owners babied these Gen1s. I expect it's not the same with later models - the novelty had worn off and most of those owners just looked at their car like any other car. The average Gen1 is in a lot better condition that other cars that old.

But, I've not inspected this one closely yet - they forklifted it onto my trailer, and my trailer has side rails, so I can't open the doors in the width left. The obvious damage is to the hood, headlights and driver's fender (very slight bend). Doesn't look like either apron is messed up or the hood hinges/mounts. I couldn't get the hood to raise, but I couldn't reach the release lever either. Once I get it off the trailer, hopefully the hood release will do the trick, but it looks like the hood is bent so much that there's space to get a wrench on the hinge bolts, so I'll get it off one way or the other.

It's supposed to run and drive, and the auction pics showed the dash lit with no CEL/triangle and the Ready light on. That doesn't mean the radiator might not have a hole, and the condenser or other front end parts, but I feel pretty good that I'll have all I need on my parts car to make this one look great. Might only have to pay a shop to paint those parts.

 

LOL, I was calling them 1, 2 and 3 at first, since I was only working on 3. Two others are flood cars, and I have already scavenged body parts off one of those to fix #3. The second one is in my garage and I'm hoping to use parts off it to fix this wrecked one. I have one more in a storage lot in Dallas that I've only seen once. I expect it's good car - came from the City of Dallas - but after all this time (2+ years) I expect the HV and 12v batteries are shot. Now, I got this wrecked one too.

Of cars 1,2 and 3, the battery from this wrecked one should finish off 1 - it was running great with the new rebuilt battery from Best, but that battery failed after a week. When I got the replacement battery, I put it in car 2 that'd been giving me the 3030, and that fixed it (that's how I confirmed the 3030 was internal to the battery). However, after driving it a couple of days, I realize that it has, probably, a bad wheel bearing - growls bad when turning left. Otherwise, it's got a cracked dash and bad spots in the touchscreen. Car 3 runs great, but it
it's giving me a CEL and my ScanGauge doesn't pull any codes. Need to get my Techstream working to see if it tells me what's wrong.

Next, I'll go get the car in Dallas. With a replacement module, this 3030 battery should be good and I'll put it in that car. Hopefully nothing else is wrong. If so, I'll have 4 good cars, plus this pretty wrecked one and all the parts to fix it. Fis that one, then strip the two flood cars of any other parts I might need later, and haul the carcasses to the recycler and get a few hundred of my dollars back.

Altogether, I'll have $5000-$6000 invested (you arrived late for the original story about how I bought the first car for a few hundred dollars, had someone hit me and their insurance give me $4000, which I used to buy back the one that got hit plus buy the other 5. Now, I've bought this other wreck plus a rebuilt battery, a few 12v batteries - I using $22 lawnmower batteries from Walmart that seem to be working fine - and a couple of inverter pumps, a set of injectors).

I hope to sell a couple and get all my money back, keep one and give one to my son. Sell the last wrecked one too, if I get it fixed.

There, now you're up to date, lol

 

Update: the battery out of this wrecked car was just fine. Not sure why my ScanGauge was showing it dead. Put it in my keeper car and I'm driving around tickled.