After the big snowstorm I noticed a weird sound while driving out of the driveway, turns out a plastic plate to guard the engine / route airflow had become unclipped, dragging on the ground. I bought it to the dealer and $30 later, it was all fixed. Just wanted to post the pics/story in case anyone else has this problem and is worried. Nate
That *should* be covered under warranty. It is silly for a car to be designed to fail in snow... If I were you, I'd follow up - do you want to worry every time you drive in snow?
I'm not sure it was solely the snow, it may have been a speed bump or something else that caused it. The guy said it was common, but it was only $30, so I dont know if its really worth it to go back and fight. For anyone in the future though, this is a great point to bring up.
I had a plastic guard come off (and go on to scrape) too on my Gen2 Prius. At least yours wasn't covering the EV lines (like mine). They denied warranty on it (even though the dealer person admitted that someone else had the same problem a little while back). EDIT: Total cost - over $100 and no guarantee that it won't happen again.
Had the same issue here, the snow banks in the middle of the lane ripped off my mounting clips on the Oil Access Door. $7.25 and 30 minutes later, it was fixed. Still irks me that I had to pay for it.
This is the first car I have owned with such low ground clearance, which to me, automatically makes it not a good snow car. Trap door should really be secured better. Otherwise, I love the car.
I had a blast in that snow storm last weekend here in Dellywhere. That little cover on the other hand, probably not so much! I drove through a few spots that hadn't been plowed and all you could see were tire track areas. Guess I helped plow it by the time I was through it! Anyway, my cover took a bit of a beating and is missing atleast one of those stupid plastic clips. Next time I'm at the dealer, I'm going into the parts dept to get a few spares. They gave me free washers for the oil drain plug when I got the filters. I'm guessing they realized it cost them more to process them through the system and pay the fee for Visa/MC than it's worth. On the bright side, it appears that the part that is hanging down is the section you have to get down to do the oil change. I did my first OC on Friday down at my brothers house. He's got one of them 30' x 30' barn/shed/garage structures. The down side was that there wasn't much light under the car to see what we were doing. Does anyone else's cover kinda droop a little bit when it's secured up? The middle of mine droops and you can push it up. I didn't notice a missing clip deal, but then again, as I mentioned, I couldn't see well so it is possible that there was a middle one missing.
As I posted elsewhere in the forum, I experience a cracked front bumper a couple days ago and after looking more closely at it, I noticed that the plastic plate under the bumper (and under the car) was also cracked - directly below the crack in the bumber. The bumper crack is on the top surface of the lower lip of the lower grill. The front and underside of the bumper are intact and unscuffed. So I'm guessing that I went over a chunk of snow and ice (we had a major snow storm here that turned into major frozen slush) that pushed up and cracked both the bottom panel and the bumper above it. Replacing the bumper and the clear bra that covers it is going to run a bit more than the $100 or less than others are quoting here. So it sounds like with the low clearance and all the plastic, things are a bit fragile. Watch very closely what you drive over!
I know that. That's why I made the comment I did. I'm expecting @$700 for the bumper and paint and @$300 for the clear bra. We'll see what State Farm has to say.
