Now here a a Prius story for you! My 2006 Prius brakes failed!

Holy crap that's an awful story of bad shop work. Got any other place you can take it?

- D

 

Well, at minimum it sounds like you can't trust the dealer tech who replaced the brake actuator. Hopefully the car will be OK once it is properly repaired, good luck.

 

A bad repair job is a good reason to distrust your mechanic, not your car. Once the dealer repairs it and apologizes to you, find a different dealer for future repairs.

 

With the same part going out twice, I strongly suspect the service. If Toyota was shipping bad actuators one would expect many more incidents like this. With any car there are going to be occasional defective parts. But when a car of the quality of Toyota shows the SAME part bad twice in a row, either something else is causing it, or it was repaired wrong. I think you need a better mechanic.

I'd go to a different shop (get a recommendation for a good Toyota dealership locally -- or take it farther away if necessary) and describe the issue, and tell them you suspect that the root cause of the actuator failure is something else, and ask them to find it.

And good luck!

 

Keep the car, but find another dealer.

Tom

 

Tech's Point of view here: At my shop, we do a few actuators... I personally have learned to go VERY slow and careful when replacing them for one simple reason... I DON'T WANNA HAVE TO DO IT AGAIN!!! They Suck!!

First, remove the invertor assembly, (if you are REALLY good and lucky AND CAREFUL you can remove just the mounting bolts and wiggle it to the side without draining the coolant)
Second, unbolt all the brake lines and the acutuator mounting bolts and disconnect the electrical connector.
Third, become a multi jointed contortionist weight lifter. The unit has a 25 lb iron weight bolted on the bottom to absorb vibrations, The unit must be wiggled and jiggled and lifted while bending over into the engine compartment. Goodbye back, shoulder and arm muscles, skin on all knuckles, 1-2 pints of blood, 1-2 pints of sweat, and quite a few nasty words and phrases....

NOW reverse the whole procedure.

Now comes the fun part..... Spend 2-3 hours bleeding the system.... Then do it again cause you definitely didn't get all the air out the first time. After bleeding the lines for the third and fourth times, you can hook up the scan tool and verify that the system is working like it should.

BTW Toyota warranty (and all extended warranties) pay about 4 hours to do this job. All humility aside, I am a pretty good tech, fast and accurate with my work and I rarely have comebacks. 2nd Gen Prius actuators take me about 6-8 hours to replace.

I do them once, VERY CAREFULLY, then recheck everything I touched five or six times over and test drive the car a minimum of 10 miles before giving it back to the customer...

Paranoid? Yeah... just a little...

 

Unrelated, but for those of us who are interested in weight reduction - is that weight there for mechanical purposes or simply to reduce NVH? I could deal with more harshness if I could reduce the weight of my car and improve the handling.

 

The weight is mounted to the bottom of the unit and is basically just a cast iron, wedge shaped block. I would advise caution before removing it since doing so might allow vibrations that could crack or damage the brake lines. Probably a slim chance of it, but I like to know as many facts and angles as possible before mods like that.

Even a simple change can cause major repercussions. Otherwise, it appears to me to be just a vibration dampner.

 

Oh! and you WILL need to remove the unit in order to gain access to the bolts that hold the weight to the unit.

 

Please rat out the dealer. It's a shame the manufacturer screws the dealer & the worker by not paying a fair price to fix their mistakes.

If you don't want to pay for warranty work: Use better parts.

 

Hi Bear,

Given that the OP drives his car 20K miles per year and the replacement brake actuator failed after 14 months, was he just unlucky with the replacement part failing so soon, or could that failure be attributed somehow to the installation? Thanks!

 

Hey Patrick,

My gut tells me that if the car went 20k and 14 months then the Tech is not to blame. 3 months and 2k miles and I would say the Tec might have goofed up the bleeding or reset, but not at the time and miles the OP got. I would have to say it is the actuator. Toyota should step up and cover that one under warranty (12 months unlimited miles) the dealer should be advocating for the customer with the factory rep.

 

If ya wanna have some fun with someone unfamiliar with Prius noises.... heh heh heh.... Take any Gen2 and move at 1-2 mph then brake firmly and just as the car stops, floor the brake pedal as hard as you can. Fluid movement through the actuator will cause a rather loud "Grunk!" noise. If you've got a factory rep or manager type who has not heard it and you do this for them, watch their face!! Priceless!

Unfortunately, this is a normal noise for the Gen2 s and can be reproduced to varying degrees on every one of them I have driven.

 

I'm a camera reapair tech and lately we have been having problems with defective new OEM replacement parts. Possibly due to so much outsourcing of parts and subassemblies. Curious as to how prevalent this might be with car parts.

Thanks

 

Wouldn't surprise me Justin. I still wonder how farfetched the "Conspiracy theory" ideas are.... Let's see Government bails out GM and basically owns GM now.... Government decides to find a way to knock Toyota out of #1 spot and put GM back on top with Ford #2..... (Forget about Dodge/Chrysler MOPAR is heading into the grave it would seem....) Who knows they might have something there....

 

Pardon my breaking in here Bear, but as a Toyota tech would you buy an extended warranty for an 08 at 30K miles? No issues with anything except the silly oem tires which are now replaced. Thanks!

 

<sadsigh> As much as it pains me.... (I don't care for Ext. Warr. since the labor times can turn out lower than factory warranty and they like to argue as though I don't know my job, AND I hate to seem like I am predicting failures for your Prius) I would highly recommend an extended warranty.
Unfortunately, our cars have been having quality issues lately. They are also BIG BUCKS even just for the parts. Hybrid components are covered for 8 years 100k, but you might be surprised at how quickly that can go by. That also does not address the issue of radio failures, we've seen a couple, MFD screen failures, (had a bunch of those back in 04-05), brake actuators, engine water pump (5yr/60k warranty), invertor water pump (5yr/60k warranty) and the dreaded HID bulbs.
I love Toyota products, but I wonder if the "Big Brass" pushed a little too hard to become the Biggest manufacturer, (beating out the Big Three) and letting quality suffer for it.

 

And Please, break in anytime Sheepdog!! This place is all about sharing information and opinions as far as I am concerned!!

Ya gotta love PC!!