hi all

i have always been fascinated with the Prius technology, however when it came time to upgrade my 20 year old car, i decided to go down the petrol route and i purchased a near new Honda Civic (2005 model) purchased in Feb 2007.

Anyways i have been looking at the local car listings for sale and came across a PRius Classic for sale, i would like to get one but i am thinking whether there is anything i should look at when i go there, also can i also drive the car in purely electric mode thereby not using any fuel as the traffic is pretty horrible here can i only crawl along on electric in peak hour traffic

im in Australia so we use metric, like km/h

anyone can give me tips on what i should consider doing?

i do like my Honda civic and i probably wont sell it, but the thing is i hardly do much driving anyway, like 6000 miles a year (10000 kms a year)

cash is not the problem as i have money saved up and i still have my old 20 yr old runabout which i could get rid of a replace with the pris classic

the add for the car is located here

http://www.carsales.com.au/used-cars...d=112B2EBEC022


i reckon its a great price for $12,500.

 

Hi,
As long as this is not your only vehicle, any used car can be a good buy. In 2005, I bought a 2003 Prius, model NHW11, for $17.3k (US) with 79,520 km. I now have over 163,000 km and it is still going strong. But I knew I had an 8 yr / 160,000 km battery and inverter warranty. I would recommend seeing what sort of hybrid warranty Toyota has in AU before going into the deal.

When buying any used car, my first purchase has always been the full maintenance manuals. This allows me to do a lot of my own work and avoid the expense of dealer repairs. IMHO, this has been one of my best buys because dealer repairs can be pretty expensive.

A 2002 Prius should have most of the latent defects found in the 2001 fixed. We have found the transaxle oil seems to wear out in about 48,000 km, not the 96,000 km in the maintenance guide. Also, the 12 VDC battery that runs the electronics doesn't last forever but there has been some success in adding water to these "sealed" batteries.

See if you can pay to have a dealer: (1) read out any error codes in the electronic control units (ECUs) and (2) read out the battery module voltages and temperatures after the car is driven around long enough to warm it up, 15-20 minutes. Unless the seller disconnects the 12 VDC battery, the codes will still be there. Some can be a worry but others that sound bad could be just a sticky throttle plate or running out of gas.

In 2007, I had a sticky throttle plate that caused the engine to stall out when starting. A second attempt to start would work but you had this ugly warning display until the car had be restarted at least three times, to suppress the cabin indicator. But a small can of throttle cleaner applied once a year solves the problem.

The vehicle has no manual, EV mode. However, once it has warmed up, ~5 minutes, and it has gone through the startup phases (more about this later), it has an automatic EV mode.

I'm expecting to run my 2003 Prius about 1,000,000 km. However, we had about 50,000, NHW11 Prius sold so there are plenty of salvage parts available. Also, we've been following the life-time problems so there is a growing pool of knowledge about how to keep them running. You might also use Google to search for "Prius fleet" to see some of the lifetime studies.

GOOD LUCK!
Bob Wilson