Gen4 Prius Transmission Fluid Change

All I’ve ever used is funnel with 3’ hose extension, works a charm.

 

Just wanted to chime in after my transmission fluid change today. First, thanks to all who have contributed here, it helped me a lot. I put my car up on ramps, for the fluid drained and then started to refill. I filled until it stated leaking out the infill hole, which was only about 3 quarts, then lightly tightened the plug back in. I took the car down off the ramps to see if I could get any more fluid in while it is flat and found that I could put in about 1/3 quart more. So, in conclusion, the car definitely needs to be flat to get the full fluid amount in. It was definitely a tight squeeze to get the last bit in with the car on the ground though! Thanks again everyone.

 

With the front on ramps consider raising the rear with a floor jack and settling onto safety stands.

 

Good job, Jim! My 2021 Prius AWD is approaching 50,000 so will doing the tranny fluid change in the Spring. (I already did my wife's 2017 and, to be honest, the hardest part is getting those factory drain/fill bolts to break free!)
Like Mendel, I refilled with a 3-foot extension hose on a funnel up in the engine bay....had to draft my wife to be the spotter for when the thing was overflowing...used 3 and 3/4 of a quart.
We DO want to always replace the crush washers...you can get 10 of them on Amazon for like 6 bucks!

Like the coolant, I change it out every 5-years or 50,000 miles, whichever comes first.

 

I saw there is one floor jack point for front or rear. I would have to guess where stands go. Maybe it’s in the book, wherever the book is, it is no longer in the car.

 

Owner's Manual recommends safety stands at the scissor jack points. That's "ok" with the lighter rear end. With our gen 3 at least, the front scissor jack points seemed VERY inadequate, the one and only time I tried them. I use alternate safety stand locations for all four corners, won't go into detail, since it's third gen.

With any of the gen's, just ahead of the rear wheels and slightly inboard, there's humps of heavily reinforced sheet metal with an oblong slot (apparently for some locking pin used during initial transport?) If putting safety stands in the rear I'd look for that, put the safety stand cradles at the centre point of that hump.

Here's gen 4 publicity pic; I've marked up those two rear points, again, just what I'd use:

 

There is only one hump of heavily reinforced steel on the driver side rear of my Prime. There isn’t one on the right side. They say this is the rear floor jack point. I started to lift it there but never got all the way up. I could already see the novelty wore off of rotating tires in the driveway.

 

This is the rear jacking point indicated in Owners Manual; are we talking about the same thing:


The points I was proposing for jack stand cradles are more forward, where I flagged with arrows in previous picture.

 

I see the little arrows as the ones now. The rear of the Prime is quite heavy. I was using a 3 ton jack on the rear point, and it seemed to be lifting hard. Supposedly both wheels go off the ground. That battery pack adds weight.

 

Oh yeah, for sure.