Shopping for a Gen II - What should I look for

hey chuck, nice to hear from you!

i would start with an overall evaluation and detailed investigation of service and accident reports.

reset the mpg's and take it for a good long test drive under varied conditions. keep the radio off and the conversation down. listen for any sounds that might be out of the ordinary. check the mpg's at the end.

pull everything out of the back and check for water or watermarks in the 12 volt battery, hybrid battery case and spare tire well. check all the fluids in the engine compartment.

all the best man!

 

If you know someone who has Techstream and a laptop, you could do a quick Health Check when you test drive the car.

How many miles on it?
From a dealer or a private party?

If it's from a private party, find out why they are selling. Ask if they have had any large repairs done, how much it is driven. Check the oil and filters.

If you have the VIN you should be able to get Service records if was done at the dealer. I may be able to check for you. (feel free to call or email)

Plenty of Prius out there to choose from.
Don't be afraid to walk away from the purchase if things don't meet your standards.

 

Look for a GEN III, or wait for the GEN IV.

 

Chuck,
I do a lot of Prius work in the Dallas Fort Worth area and have several customers in Lewisville. I don't think you listed a year but I'm figuring 05 to 08 with those miles. Your first concern should be the hybrid battery. Ask if it's been replaced, if yes ask who did it and does it have a warranty. If it has it's original battery you should plan to replace it in the next few years if not sooner. That' s going to be $1000 -$2000 depending on what type of repair you choose. Don't let the battery issues scare you away from the older Prius, just make sure the buying price is right. For reference, right now we are replacing batteries mostly on 2007 model cars between 140K and 180K. Also ask if the 12 Volt battery has been replaced, if it's more than 5 years old plan on getting a new one soon. That's about a $200 expense.

The other thing that you should be aware of is that almost all of these cars past 150K use oil. I see a couple of cars a week that have very low or NO oil on the dip stick. It's so bad that I have to keep oil with me on every job and add it if needed. I don't want a customer to blow an engine on a test drive. Check the oil when you look at the car, if it's at the bottom of the stick I would walk away.

Most of the other stuff on these cars is just maintenance. Most Prius that are running poorly just need spark plugs, PCV valve, and a MAF sensor cleaning and then they run great. I personally like the Gen 2 Prius better than the Gen 3 and I think for the price you just can't beat these cars. We're lucky because there is an almost unlimited supply of dependable used parts for these cars here in DFW. We can get things like inverters, transmissions, brake actuators, and engines for just a couple hundred dollars instead of the thousands that they cost at the dealership. If you have any questions let me know. If you want a pre-purchase inspection I'm in your area several days a week and I'd be happy to look at a car for you and give you my opinion. I only use Toyota Techstream and diagnostic work is ALWAYS free which is the way it should be.

Matt Sauer - Owner
Texas Hybrid Batteries, LLC
Your source for all Prius repairs without the dealer prices
(817) 629-8394
www.texashybridbatteries.com

 

Check tire condition, that they match, look at the date code. A tread depth gauge is good to bring along; they're $4~5.

Verify all signal and light condition. Lots burnt out or not operating right is possible red flag.

As you're going around, eyeball the cleanliness of the whole car, inside and out, the engine bay, the spare tire well. Does it look regularly cleaned by diligent owner, or hastily cleaned by a detailing shop. The difference can be subtle, but your spidey sense may pick something up.

Look at the underside. Anything hanging, wheel wells semi-clean, front/rear bumper underside condition, muffler?

 

ScanGuage will tell you if there are any uncleared DTCs. Apart from that it will just give you realtime numbers like for any other vehicle. It can't do much as far as determining the health of the car. But you could check on the 12volt battery.

 

I'm curious about your statement that he should be planning on a battery replacement. I was under the impression that many of these cars go 200K or longer on the original battery and, in fact, battery failures are quite rare. What percentage of gen 2s are you seeing needing battery replacements?

I have a 2007 Touring that just turned 170K. It has a healthy battery (for now), but I can vouch for the oil consumption concern. Mine uses a quart every 2K miles or so. With the recommended 5K oil change interval, that's only 1 between changes.

The thing I'd look for is making sure you get a higher spec model with the Smart Key system. Very handy. Look for the square black buttons on the outside of the front doors and hatch.

On listening for odd noises when test driving, that's hard to do if you aren't familiar with the Prius. It makes a lot of odd noises compared to a "normal" car, or at least mine does.

 

Salguod,
I definitely wouldn't say that hybrid batteries failures are rare at this point. Percentages I don't know about for sure but I can tell you that last year I replaced 130 Prius batteries in my area and I'm only tapping into a small part of the market. The people that I've talked to that buy cars at auctions said during the summer their were 25 to 30 Gen 2 Prius a week at the wholesale auction and they all had bad batteries. Those would be all of the dealership trade-ins that owners didn't want to pay to have fixed. Sometimes I feel like Priuschat at least in the Gen 2 section is becoming Hybrid Battery Failure Chat. Like I told the op, we are replacing all 2005 to 2007 batteries right now and more 2007 than anything. All range from 110,000 to 180,000 miles with the occasional lucky owner that got to 220 or 230. I'm not saying that you need to fear that your battery is about to die because every climate is different and the hot summers down here are hard on batteries.

I talked with the op on the phone after he test drove a car today and he described that the battery graph got down to 1 purple bar on the highway but quickly recharged all the way to the top of the green. Walk away I said, or ask them to take another $1500 off of the asking price so that the battery can be fixed in a week or 2 when it dies completely.

Your oil usage is about like mine. I add a half quart about every third fill up, 1200 miles or so.

Matt

 

Interesting, that seems to be a change from when we bought ours in fall of 2013. The conventional wisdom then seemed to be that the battery was generally pretty bullet proof.

My wife loves the car and wants to keep it, I guess I should be putting some money aside for a future battery replacement.

SM-T320 ?

 

bulletproof forever? keep in mind, ohio is not texas. when it comes to batteries, heat kills.
also, time seems to be worse than miles. low mileage older pri don't seem to hold up as well as taxi's.

 

Bullet proof in that they generally seemed to be lasting the life of the car. Perhaps I'm looking back with rose colored glasses. I hadn't considered the location difference either.

 

agreed, the car is probably designed for the 10 year, 150,000 mile warranty. but you can keep it running as long as you want to. not really sure what 'the life of the car means', would a dead battery qualify for end of life?

 

ANY car can be maintained indefinitely...if you want spend the money.

 

Salguod,
A lot has changed in terms of hybrid battery awareness since 2013. You've got to figure that with an average life span of 9 years, the first of the 2004 model year Prius batteries were just starting to fail at that time. Another thing to remember is that Toyota claims that hybrid battery failure is rare, well of course they do. If they told buyers that in 8-9 years it was going to cost $4000 to get a new battery the sales would obviously decline. Toyota told us all that the battery would last the life of the car which was 10 years and 150,000 miles. But they messed up because they made the Prius so well that it lasted longer than they ever expected it to.

Frodoz is right, if your willing to spend the money you can keep any car going forever. My 2006 has almost 270,000 miles on it, it's had a new battery and all of it's regular maintenance. Other than using some oil it is in perfect condition and I would feel comfortable driving it almost anywhere. In terms of cost of ownership it beats anything I've ever had before.

One more thing about the batteries. There is very noticeable difference in the way the hybrid batteries fail in the Gen 1 Prius vs. the 04-06 vs. the 07-09. I believe this can be attributed to the higher regeneration currents that Toyota designed into the hybrid system as the years progressed. Below are two graphs of battery current, same battery state of charge and driving style. The scale is +100 Amps to -100 Amps. Regeneration (Charging the battery) is indicated by negative currents. The top graph is a 2005 and the bottom graph is a 2007. Notice how much more time the 2007 spends at very high regeneration currents vs the 2005. It's probably 50 Amps for short bursts vs 90 Amps for much longer periods of time. Anybody with any experience with batteries knows that the faster and longer you charge a battery the hotter it gets. Heat makes batteries age and fail sooner. I suspect the we will see a big shift in the rate of battery failures over the next few years. My advice is start saving now for the new one if you want to keep your car. These are just my opinions and are based completely on the testing that I've done here in my area, it could be different for you.

2005 Prius Battery Current


2007 Prius Battery Current


Matt

 

Basically what I meant was that once the rest of the car was considered "dead" the battery was still functional. In other words, the battery wasn't the determining factor.

When I bought ours, this site was a determining factor in the purchase because of the reports of stellar reliability, including the battery. In fact, I recall at the time the talk was that even if we got one of the rare failed batteries, a junk yard replacement would be a viable option because they were that reliable. That was the talk here, not just the spin from Toyota. Things have changed, or, as I said, I've got a selective memory.

 

i think you were correct in your determination. after all, in 2007, there was only 3 years of real data on gen 2 batteries. now, after 12 years, the batteries have proven extremely reliable. in some cases, it maybe that the rest of the car is going longer than was thought early on. what exactly would you expect to break at this point in time on your car, engine? tranny? it turns out the an a/c compressor is more expensive than a battery replacement.