Farewell my light blue friend

Haven't been on these forums much the last few years, but after my 20-yr-old niece crashed my 2002 Prius into a guardrail and I got back from retiring it to the scrapyard, felt I needed to give it a proper eulogy,...

The final tally: 15 years, 173K miles, 2 owners, 1 HV battery replacement. Was my reliable daily driver for over 10 years, then helped my parents for a few years when the settled into a senior community in Las Vegas. The last 18 months was teaching the ropes to my newly-licensed niece who's been with us to attend community college.

Repairs: Only one major issue the whole time, though it took years to track down, was the inverter coolant pump. Had caused intermittent turtling over the years, mostly after hot weather or long 6-8 hours road trips, the car would suddenly lose power. After sitting for an hour it would then come back to normal, and then not show any signs for another year or longer. The reknowned Luscious Garage did find the HV battery was getting old, so we did replace it just in case. But in the end the turtling and the declining mpg and efficiency was probably due to the inverter pump failing at least 6-8 years ago, but the inverter didn't get too hot most of the time with the mild Cali temps and short commutes to have issues. Once the pump was replaced, mpg jumped back up to the 40's and car had been running fine ever since.

Maintenance: Aside from oil changes, tires, and a few 12V batteries, almost nothing needed. Around 100K miles did change timing belt, transmission fluid, inverter coolant, and I think differential fluid. Still had the original brake pads to the very end.

May you rest in peace!

Frontend_wreck by wwu123 posted Apr 20, 2017 at 12:08 PM

 

Well, sadly I dropped comp and collision on it when renewing my auto insurance in January - thing was, my 20-yr-old niece licensed only one year was the primary driver and drove the rate up. It didn't seem worth it to pay $600/yr for a $1000 deductible, on a car with KBB of <$2000.

Even worse timing is that when I bought a new car a week earlier, I dropped towing and disablement coverage on my older cars, it paid only $50 per incident and didn't seem worth it for $20/year premium on all the cars. I've since had to tow two cars in one week including the Prius, which cost $400 out of pocket to tow off the freeway. If my wife had not had the two truck driver take it to their lot, I think I could've gotten at least $500 for the car/battery. But because the storage fees were clocking up, I only had time to have a local scrapyard get it for $250.

I've noticed also in my area (SF bay), someone on Craiglist is offering to swap Gen 1 reconditioned batteries for about $500. Great deal for Gen 1 owners to keep these cars going, much less than the $2500 I paid five years ago from a reputed garage.