Melchior's 2007 white "Comfort" Gen 2

Just around two weeks ago I bought this car after months of agonising over what should be my next car. Something HAD to be done; the mk3 Golf I'd owned for two years was a great workhorse and simple to maintain but old old old. I was gunning for a BMW 325ti. A friend of mine has one and I really like that they are not normal 3 series. I don't need a big car and thought I could continue living with 3 doors. Plus that silky smooth 6 cylinder! Lovely.

However, I spotted a Gen 1 Prius for sale for a good low price and was promptly put off it. But it got me looking at these cars which I'd of course always thought were for tree huggers. Until I drove one and realised it actually suited me. I use the car to get me and my OH to work when the weather is bad. Trips to the shops, driving to and forth out motorhome park.

Rambling over, here it is. After seeing a few from dealers which were too expensive and/or bad condition, I went for this from a private seller. It wasn't the Business or Tech (NL specs) editions I was after but the price and condition seemed good in the end so I took it.

2007 Comfort edition with just under 206,000km on the clock.

The view as I pulled up to collect it from the seller's house:


It was shod with winter tyres so I jumped online and found a set of wheels with summer tyres for €280. The winters are in my shed waiting for what little real winter we have here.


Next door neighbour happens to have a Gen 3:


Unsure of the maintenance details so I bought these:


Oil filter on these things is soooo small, here it is compared to the one from my Fiat Ducato based motorhome:


Cabin filter, current one is gross:


THE engine belt. I'm still a bit amazed that this car only has one small thin belt!


Engine air filter - current one is "ok" but no more no less so I'll change it anyway:


that's it for now, I'll update as I go along.

 

Thanks for the replies folks - Eclipse1701d I am adding those coolant changes to my to-do list and will update here when I do them.

Changed the cabin filter, old one looks ancient! Sorry if you're having dinner...

 

Is there a larger filter from another Toyota which fits the Prius engine and is perhaps easier on which to use a 'normal' filter strap/wrench?

 

Today I changed the transmission oil, engine oil, engine oil filter and water pump belt. All really easy jobs, so far the Prius is a joy to work on. Nothing awkward, seized, snapped, broken or bodged. Weather was warm but not hot or sunny, a slight breeze and almost perfect for working on the car outside.

Got her up on the ramps, pulled some tools out of the shed and got to work one job at a time.



First up, transmission fluid. All went to plan, this is a sample of what came out. Not terrible (I was expecting black sticky toffee) but has clearly been in there a while. The magnetic drain plug had a fair amount of debris stuck to it.


And as a lot of you guys probably know, this is what the new fresh stuff looks like.


Next up was the engine oil. Didn't take any pictures of it but it was clearly overdue. Like a classic idiot I didn't check deeply enough when I bought the car and am now finding out that it looks like the oil wasn't changed often enough in the car's past. There are a lot of dark brown deposits under the oil cap and the dipstick took some scraping in some areas to get it clean. No comeback on that, it was a private sale and I can only blame myself! I will change the oil a few times over with short intervals, I've done this with cars in the past with good results.

We talked about what to use to remove these tiny oil filters - the metal strap thingy I use worked fine on its smallest setting:


Last job was the water pump belt. This was very easy except for the pulley bolt which needed an extender bar because the bolt/stud were a bit corroded. Some WD40 and elbow grease loosened it off. Here's the old one - again a tad overdue (!)



A test drive showed the car sounded quieter and seemed a tiny bit smoother when switching between ICE and electric.

Odo reading for these jobs is 206978 km

Today also saw my second visit to the petrol station, 811km after my last visit. Very pleased with that, I've certainly never owned another petrol car with such range. On board computer and manual calculations show 5.0 l/100km which is great.

Next step is inspect/replace spark plugs and replace engine and inverter coolant. Not this weekend though

 

Beachbum, thanks I have already started to research the coolant changes and will post up here when I finally get some time to do those. Haven't even bought the new coolant yet so it's a few weeks off probably.

Today I was looking at buying new spark plugs pending inspection of the existing ones. Hard to find the correct part number, having searched on this forum and others the Denso IFR5T11 part number came up which I cannot find online here in Netherlands. Did find NGK 4996 though, they cost €27.31 - EACH! Think I'll pass on that.

To do list is currently:

• Inspect spark plugs
• Change oil again
• Buy enough LLC to change engine and inverter coolant
• Inspect/clean HV battery fan

Questions to the floor:

• Which spark plugs (make and model) should I be searching for?
• Is the correct gap 1.0 to 1.1mm?
• Is the coolant type the same for engine and inverter? Am I right in thinking it should be Toyota LLC or SLLC and that these are both pre-mixed?
• How many litres of the above are required?

thanks all
M

 

Thanks as usual Patrick, very helpful

This evening I pulled 3 of the 4 spark plugs and found this on all of them:





Looking pretty good and the correct type. I'll keep searching for a sensibly priced new ones but having seen these ones I'm not making it a priority.

 

Gap not measured because I don't have any feeler gauges yet.
Nothing at all happened to the 4th one because the dinner bell rang. It was taking longer to remove because of the short wiring to the igniter/coil so I left it alone.

120k service life, hmm. I cannot tell if these plugs are the original ones but the car is past that mileage at almost 207,000km ( ~ 128,000 miles) so perhaps I should prioritise a plug change.

Out of curiosity, what sort of price do you pay in the US for these plugs?