Park gear

I got a good giggle out of this thread, at no time did I think you were serious.

Seriously, you owe me a martini. Make that a double. Anything to warm me up, it's freezing out there.

 

I recommend FloMax! Seems to work well

 

That reminds me of a story from a Seattle area of hospital. A maintenance worker at the hospital was cleaning the floor in the MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) room and thought the floor needed a bit of buffing so he fetched the power buffer to shine things up. Well the buffer flew across the room to the magnets, the buffer is junk, MRI damaged and lessons learned.

 

"love that you mentioned Robert Taylor in your post and really put the pressure on Robert Taylor to answer. Of course, you knew all along that Robert Taylor has no clue!.
"

How many Robert Taylor's are there? From the looks of it there are at least two.


Relating a personal story about ruining a standard transmission and how to avoid it did not garner anything from you but a jeer, but it happens to be correct, because I have seen many drivers do the following sequence:

Stop on incline to park the vehicle
place into park gear (engagement of catch paw as Junior Sample calls it in these parts, pawl is correct)
Take foot off brake, placing hundreds of pounds of pressure on the pawl.
Set Parking Brake
Get back into vehicle and wonder why moving transmission is VERY difficult to move from park. Heck, its only supporting a goodly percentage of the weight of the vehicle at that point

I still think that a Prius parked on an incline that is parked in that example sequence is going to have weight put on it likely beyond the limitations of design. This is still a mechanical system when PARKED, and the electrical part of the disengagement of that pawl is likely designed with a limitation less than, say a quarter of vehicle weight. (as an example) As I wrote, if it acts strange, then, get another vehicle to push the Prius uphill to relieve the pressure. (note: the manual says the system will show a parking system error message)

Let me make the point again, parking procedures on incline are where the possiblitiy of screwing something up with the park gear occur with the Prius. There are lockout safeties on the park gear that prevent its engagement at speed, so the only real trouble to cause it is loading weight upon the pawl WHILE ON INCLINE beyond the weight load limit.

See pages 138-142 of the 2005 owners manual

CORRECT sequence on incline (2005 manual)
1. Bring vehicle to complete stop
2. With the brake pedal pressed down, fully depress the parking brake pedal to apply the parking brake securely.
3. With the brake pedal pressed down, push the "P" position switch

Further down on the same page...

When shifting the transaxle from "P" ON THE SLOPE, a large parking lock releasing noise will be generated. However this does not indicate a malfuntion.

Next page...

If the system malfunctions...

The parking system error message appears on the multi-information display.

Dear reader, just what do you think is happening when that "large noise" happens when the pawl is being released on slope(incline)???

Lemme guess, we have a metal to metal scraping happening! Within specs! And if we have weight beyond electro pawl disengagement capability, I expect we get that parking system error message.

Let me tell you again, this incorrect sequence of parking on slope events is the most common thing I see in bad parking practice. I had to over and over and over with my wife's nuclear engineer degreed nephew as to why he had to follow the correct sequence when he borrowed and drove my car. Typically every Junior Sample in these parts makes the car rock putting it into park, and can't hardly shift it out of Park on slope.

Do you know what the astute frequently do in San Francisco? (city with some seriously inclined streets, if you have never been there) They park so that a tire is run into the curb to help keep from loading up that pawl with too much weight.

 

So you think this is funny.....do you realize that as soon as I saw my name mentioned and that my expertise was required I immediately went outside and began disassembling my Prius ( no easy task with a broken wrist) in order to determine the answer. Since it will take several weeks to put everything back together I might come across something of interest. Will keep [you] posted.
And, Jayman, I completely understand the American/Canadian thing 'cause my wife is one of those from Indiana.

 

My partner's wife ruined a transmission on her Jaguar by putting it park and not putting on the parking brake on a steep incline. She could not get the transmission out of park. By the time the tow truck dragged the car off to a dealer the transmission was junk. I would think you could design a car so this would not happen.

 

Jeepien (without brackets). I'd say that's a somewhat deceptive trick, along the lines of 'personalized' mass mailings, the use of the You Button/brackets. Many of us previously trusting and helpful posters fell for it from ignorance and are thus more cynical and a bit mistrustful of posters on this forum.

Tony (no brackets), thanks for exposing the trick.

Going forward, I will be more hesitant to reply and suspicious of postings.

MHO above notwithstanding, I thank all of YOU honest and caring forum members who took the time to actually research the question and provide tips and answers, I now feel like I know the Prius better.

It's blizzarding here.

 

I expect that the partner's wife is actually a pretty bright person. In my experience, few actually get well trained in correct parking procedure and even fewer actually ever read owners manuals. I read mine cover to cover.

That nuclear engineer nephew I referenced took 10 minutes of argument to get him to understand that I wanted my car parked in a manner consistent with the owners manual. He kept saying that 99% of the time his loading the pawl was meaningless, and he would set the parking brake when on a significant incline.

Oh yeah? You will forget to do that unless you make proper procedure a habit I told him. Correct routines prevent screwups.

I bet that lady never used a parking brake.

 

Absolutly cool feature and Jeepien nice use of it. With me I assume everything and I assume nothing If I see my name posted anywhere I always respond with some sence of humor. Its also a really good ice breaker for us lerkers.

 

Words fail me to tell you how funny that is. Laughing out loud will have to do.

 

Tempus beat me to it. As he stated, it is still a machanical parking prawl, jus like in a regular automatic transmission. The '04 and up models are just engaged with a solenoid instead.

 

Oh my... That's one silly variable.
Very good!
Learning something new every day!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TonyPSchaefer\";p=\"65526)</div>

Offended me??? Not hardly. I've been a veteran of message groups for many many moons. You'd have to do an all out obscene verbal attack to even get my dander up. :mrgreen:

 

8) TonyPSchaefer,

In my field of work, I have learned, not to be thin skinned. I take no offence to being an unwitting dupe in this thread. All I want now is my sign stating “SUCKER†inlaid with gold lettering and in a very nice frame.

Ben




:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :mrgreen:

 

Be a tad careful with #2. When I had the rental for a week before ordering, my wife drove us to a restaurant. I told her to push in the parking brake, push P and then Power. When we came out, she couldn't get the parking brake off, she had pushed it in HARD. I had to push REALLY REALLY hard to get it to release!

 

Yeah? I had to yank really hard to get that transmission out of park.

It was in the shop being rebuilt two weeks or so later.

I would have been delighted with a hard to release parking brake. Dang transmission rebuild is 1850.00.

That pull a handle release is one item that is superior over the Toyota push some more release system.

I wonder who here has heard that "Large Noise" while "on a slope"

There is still something slightly funny about Japanese translated manuals.

 

This is where the Allison HD automatic transmissions used in transit busses and HD trucks have a huge advantage: there IS no Park position. Just R, N, and the normal forward range select.

So with those applications, you MUST use the parking brakes.

 

Indeed, I did not know that but it makes sense.

A lack of that mechanical pawl would get rid of a part that has killed many a transmission when it has been withdrawn under load and left metal to fly around on the inside of the transmission.

No one wrote back and said that they have heard that "large noise" that the owners manual writes about when Park is disengaged on a slope.

 

Well, I've never heard that noise in my Prius as I religiously use my parking brake. I have heard that noise in conventional automatic transmissions: it's a metallic clank or clunk. You just KNOW something bad is happening inside there.

 

I can help you with that second part, Bob Allen. At it's core, the gravity magnet is mounted on a gyroscope so that it can align with neighboring magnets of the same type, thus adding to the attractive power of the Prius regardless of configuration. The buildup is slow, but eventually the pull can become so strong that scientists are theorizing that a Prius convention of significant size will temporarily relocate the center of the universe to that point.