missing item in trunk

Hi Tony,

What you've got there is the towing eye. You should be able to tighten it into the threaded hole in the driver's end of the front bumper, in case you ever need to be pulled out of a ditch. It's a good idea to make sure you really can start the threads in that hole, because mine got so rusty that I can't, making the tow eye useless. After cleaning up the threaded hole, people talk about giving it a heavy coat of grease and popping a rubber stopper in.

I've been trying to figure out what exact thread is used there, to get a tap for cleaning it up. I think it's M21x2.0 or M22x2.0 (I'm certain of the 2.0, it's just the diameter I'm not sure of, and none of my local hardwares or machine shops has a thread gauge that size to make sure).

As for the rectangular cavity: in some countries (European?) the car is required to come with a warning reflector for breakdowns; the end would go in that cavity, and it would be secured upright with the little strap you should see near the wheel well. In the US we don't get the reflector, but we still have the rectangular hole and the strap.

The previous owner of mine apparently discovered that a 300W TrippLite inverter fit that cavity perfectly, and they left it for me.

-Chap

 

Hi Tony,

If I correctly recall, the towing eye may have a home on the bottom of the spare tire cover.

 

That pushed me to think about it some more, and I finally found a web site with the actual ISO metric thread dimensions and compared them to what I measured, and I'm pretty sure it's M22x2.0 now. So I've gone ahead and ordered a tap and if it works for me, maybe I'll engrave it "PriusChat" and it can circulate to PC gatherings....

-Chap

 

That must be a fairly expensive tap?

 

Did you actually get a jack with the car?
.
_H*

 

Well, if valuing the time it took me to find it, yes. :/ None of the hardware stores in town were able to suggest where it could be ordered.

Anyway, it arrived, M22x2.0 is the correct size, it made short work of the rusty-hole problem, and now there's one conveniently located in west-central Indiana if needed.

-Chap