Prius Wheel Covers, Popping Off

Welcome to Priuschat! Many PRIME owners took off the wheel cover from day 1 after purchase, revealing perfectly functional (but equally ugly IMHO) alloy wheel underneath it. You just need a center cap to dress it up. I have not had any problem with wheel cover, and don't like the look of alloy underneath. However, I just got myself a set of new aftermarket alloy wheels with winter tires.

 

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I do not know about a safety issue OR a design issue....but I did lose a wheel cover after 140,000 miles while driving on an "unimproved" (gravel/dirt) road.
I haven't gotten around to taking the other three covers off because it's a company car.

If I were you I'd go to either Lowes or HD and ask for five 1-1/2 inch electrical knock-out covers.They will look like this:

.....and they will cost about fifty cents each.
You can paint them or just leave them silver....according to taste.

The reason you will want 5 is that you have to slightly bend out the tabs so that they will fit on your wheels and...well.....if you're losing hubcaps then either the caps are crap (something previously unknown to me) or you're driving on rough roads, or some combination of the two.

Since everybody loves bling, you can also buy center caps with the crossed backside Toyota emblem embossed on them for about $20.

Good Luck!

 

A local taxi company driver told me that they put several black zip ties around each wheel cover to prevent this from happening. I have never tried it so am unfamiliar with what it looks like after this modification.

 

I had no trouble popping off the OEM wheel trims of my 2009 Gen II (Touring), after I decided (…just like many other things!), the OEM alloy wheels look much nicer nekkid!

 

I've noticed a few local Prius with zip-ties on the wheel covers.

Off-topic: Honda's wheel covers have an inovation (or they did): they're held on by plastic washers on the shoulders of the lug nuts.

 

Must not being put back on correctly, they stay.
But...leave them off and get the center caps, a 1 1/2” knockoff cap from an electrical panel fits, 1$ each, or source center caps for a Yaris, eBay, the 17” wheels are a different size, as are gen 2-3 prii.

 

"Dealer" wheel covers - Are these non-factory and different from what Toyota ships? If so, that's why.

If they're the Prius Prime wheel covers that come with the car and they keep popping off, they're being installed wrong.

 

That's what I run year round here in the mountains. X-I3's

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

I have seen a few other people mentioning doing that. They were my first ever studless snow, and I really liked them, but always took them off in spring. How are the handling in summer? How long the tread last if you keep them on during summer?

 

Or look into Nokian/Nordman "all weather" tires? Not sure how available they are in the States; up here Kal Tire is pretty much the place for this (Finnish) manufacturer:

Tires | Car, Mini-Van, Cross-Over, Truck & SUV Tires

Finland: good tires, and good crime dramas.

 

Yes, I was thinking of getting Nokian WRG3 first. I found very good price online, but had to buy wheels separately from elsewhere. Since Discount Tire did not carry Nokian. I went with Xi3 for tire + wheel set mounted and balanced and no TPMS!

 

Rebel. ...

 

Discount Tire sells TPMS @$40 each far less than dealer would charge for it. But, I still have to take the tires to shop to have the ID read and registered to ECU each tire swap. I decided to save $160 on TPMS and ongoing tire swap cost at shops, then invested the money into a floor jack, stands and torque wrench.

 

Carista 40$ has the ability to register new tpms to prioritize.
I haven't tried, read it on their site yesterday.
eBay offers tpms for 20$ish each.

 

For counterpoint: Mazda dealerships sell their tpms sensor (online Ontario dealership I checked) for $35 CDN, and the car will recognize new sensors by just driving it around a bit. I'm just grousing, but maybe it's time Toyota got off their duff...

 

Yes, I read that on this thread Carista TPMS Tool | PriusChat
Still cost $40/year. Better than $50 x twice a year for shop visits. I guess, I could get away with $9/week Carista subscription twice a year, so that would be $18/year. For a long time, I thought I had to have working TPMS in order to pass state inspection, but that turned out to be not true. It is perfectly legal to drive a car with non-functioning TPMS in my state. On the other hand, auto shops are not allowed to remove functional TPMS, so shop or dealer would not install winter tires on without TPMS if I have working TPMS in summer wheels. I like TPMS. It saves times and possibly saves a lot of trouble, but I am not a big fan of dumb TPMS icon on Prius and many other cars. For that reason, I just installed external TPMS on each tire with display unit on dash. It is functioning far better than the OEM ones so far.

 

I don't know how much Toyota dealers sell OEM TPMS. I had Honda dealer replace OEM TPMS on Civic, and that costed me ~$200 (parts and labor). The same service for the same car when I took it to local tire shop costed me only ~$50 for aftermarket TPMS (parts and labor). You can find Toyota OEM TPMS for around $40 online. Mazda dealer would still charge more for labor to put on TPMS than a local shop, I would think.

Edit: I checked it. The OEM TPMS for PRIME has MSRP $82.02, so that would be the price most dealer would charge for it. You can buy exactly the same thing online like Amazon or eBay for half of that price.

 

I recently had a problem with the TPMS unit on the RightFore wheel developing a leak, but my trusty tyre maintenance shop (TownFareTire) replaced the leaking one, re-balanced the wheel and calibrated the new sensor for $61.94, took about an hour, which is cheaper and quicker than I could have done it!

 

I think Mazda is No. 2, they try harder?