Rookie Prius Driver-A GREAT Western Road Trip

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(BrettDanKen\";p=\"46079)</div>

This has not been my experience. It has been raining here, in Southern California, since Saturday night. I have been using both front and rear wipers regularly, at the same time, without a problem. However, in my opinion, the rear wiper cleans a very small, and thus inadequate, area of the rear window.

 

Ditto. It was raining pretty hard here this morning, and I had both the front and rear wipers on at the same time too. I agree that the rear wiper could be larger and may look into getting a bigger one, but I find with the rear window being so flat, a lot of moisture accumulates on it and the wiper, though, wimpy, does help.

 

Port Townsend, Wa

Glad you had a great trip! I used wheelskins ordered from this site,
looks and feels great! Again thanks to the info posted previously on
PC!

http://www.aapd.net/wheelskins/default.asp...FERER=GoogleWS1


Harry

 

Sounds like fun.<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(BrettDanKen\";p=\"46079)</div>

You could have made it a much longer trip if you went through Moscow, Vermont

There is also a "daytime when lights on" setting for the screens. Instructions in the owner's maual somewhere. I don't recall exactly.

I humbly DISAGREE! I didn't figure it would be anything I would notice but it really does work well. I love it. What I first noticed is that I wasn't bothered by lights behind me. Especially the SUV lights which come in above the rear spoiler. Just to see what sort of difference it makes, I turned it off. BIG difference.

Not true in my car either. You might want to check again and if they really don't work at the same time, go see your Toyota service people.

My FAVORITE non hybrid feature

 

Great to hear about your trip across the western states. I have a 2005 incoming this Tuesday and was wondering about the front wipers. I saw a prius in rain a few weeks back and it seemed they were going slower than most other vehicles either at low or high intervals. Did you notice that?

Cruise Control.......Also, with other toyotas I have owned in the past, when you activate cruise control and are coming up on inclines, the engine seems to really shift down and make a tremendous amount of noise doing so(corollas, tercels, RAV4's). I am assuming it is because of the smaller engines. Any thoughts? Thanks for your time....

 

Appreciate your trip report. While we've only taken some local island trips up to the mountains however my experience re the cruise control is similar. Very pleased with the overall performance.
Craig0812: We had some doozers of rain storms up here recently.Since I remembered a post somewhere complaining about the speed control of the Prius wipers I was expecting the worst but am now impressed with the range available. Maybe some of those folks driving Prii haven't mastered the controls yet.

 

Thanks for all your feedback about the wipers. I feel much better about the wiper systems now. As for the cruise control, I can live with the noise level it makes when forced to go up hills. This is a natural occurrence.

I have one additional question and I believe it boils down to a personal preference but here it goes: I have the choice of either taking a prius with the voice navigation(loaded with everything else) and a "loaded" package that doesn't include the voice navigation. I first said yes, give me navigation, and now of course after reading some things about it, I may have my doubts. Those comments I read about it aren't bad, per say, but I guess everyone has their own feel about it. Any suggestions? Also, unfortunately, I cannot get the dark charcoal seats with the salsa red pearl color and now I'm wondering if those beige seats will be an issue, since I'm planning to carry my bike inside the prius, with the seats folded down of course. I know.. lots of questions...but hey, I got to get feedback...Thanks for your time!!!!

 

Rain-X. It works great. This is not a commercial. It's the first thing I do when I get a new car. And I refresh it a couple times a year.

Above 40-45 mph, I rarely need to use my wipers in the rain. The rain beads up and slides right off the windshield as fast as it hits. Snow, bugs and dirt come off easier.

I put it on the back window and I don't need that wiper much either. It sure helps there with that little wiper. I really only use the back wiper once or twice for the morning dew.

 

Ditto! I noticed that the water starts to bead and blow up the windshied about 25 MPH. In my Odyssey, which also had a pretty steeply sloped windshield, I had to get up to 35 MPH.

As far as getting "loaded with NAV" or "loaded without NAV", I'm not sure what that second one is, AM package maybe? The major differences are NAV, the Homelink mirror and stereo upgrade - 6 CD changer, 3 extra speaker and a cassette deck. The mirror and stereo can be had as accessories. So, iif you don't want to pay for NAV, you can get the other stuff.

 

Craig 0812,
Like you are doing, we researched our Prius for months before making a decision. When we found PriusChat we visited the site sitting in the "weeds" until we were convinced that here was the place to have our questions answered in an honest and straightforward manner. Without exception we have been very impressed with the knowledge and experience of all the members. No, you shouldn't take the first opinion expressed but here is my take on the NAV system package:
Up here it was an expensive piece of optional equipment so we declined that option.
Research for us indicated that the Garmin 2620 was more reasonable ($1500 CAD) and had up to-date data for Canada ( and US & Puerto Rico).
Our first test of the system was finding our son's new address, having moved from Seattle to Courtenay, BC to a fairly new subdivision. It did so without any problem. The voice directions are excellent and even displayed the runway's of the island airport, Cassidy, CYCD. It is portable, without any wiring except to plug it into the power outlet. We place it on it's beanbag (supplied, as is a fixed support) on the dash , centered so both driver and passenger can see the info. It comes with a PC USB connection which I used to update the latest software( not map info but the hard drive in the unit has memory for doing that.)
I have had some little previous experience with the Garmin 530 GNS aircraft GPS system (approx $18,000 CAD) so I guess I was already hooked. It's worth having a look.
Gary