Hi folks, I've had my 2010 III for a week and a half, and I'm really enjoying the experience. A couple of concerns/questions, however. 1. I've got some mild back issues, and this seat has been giving me some pain. I haven't really had any issues with seats before but it seems to be the culprit in this case, and after a day of driving on Saturday, I was legitimately sore on Sunday. I read people's complaints prior to purchasing and wanted to hold out for power seats, but the deal was too good to pass up Is there anything I can do to improve it? I've done some searching here but didn't find anything too conclusive. Are there aftermarket cousions or things you can attach to it? 2. My car is from Florida, where apparently they don't need front license plates, so I need to mount a plate to the beautiful front of my prius. How does one go about mounting a front plate? Are there OEM or aftermarket brackets or do I just level it and -gasp- screw it to the plastic? :| Thanks for any advice you may be able to provide. -boe
Maybe some sort of back pillow or seat cover might help you, not sure. I would do a bit of research before you put the front plate on. In Nebraska you are "required" to have a front plate but I've had a vehicle without front plates for years now without any sort of problem. I'd ask around.
TushCush or a lumbar cushion may be good things to search on amazon or google. Will bring up lots of info
Seat Cover Lumbar Pumps for Back Support - Wet Okole Hawaii - You could probably get them without the seat covers and then get the seat covers later (their covers are custom made so they take a while to get). Also, I think the seats adjust for height and angle of the bottom cushion as well as for rake of the seat back, and possibly also for lumbar support in the seatback. Check your owners manual. Mine came with a shaped front plate mounting bracket from Toyota. So if the previous owner tossed it maybe you could order one from the dealer or from one of the online Toyota parts suppliers.
Attached below is install instructions. You can get the bracket at a dealer, but rockauto.com might be cheaper (or do a Google search for other online prices).
I appreciate the replies. I'll look into getting that front license plate mount and into some of the seat options as well.
Check this site out - Back, Travel Lumbar Support | Relax the Back and Lumbar Cushions & Back Cushions for Office Chair Back Support The second link if you scroll all the way to the bottom you will see a couple more for the car that I didn't see from the first link. They have actual physical stores around the country. They have one in your state. Not sure if this is close by you or not. 13945 Aldrich Avenue South Burnsville, MN 55337
Check in the compartment under the floor in the trunk and under that - next to the spare tire. The front plate bracket is shipped uninstalled to the dealer. It might still be there if the previous owner didn't toss it.
There's a thread on here with someone that fitted a pop up plate on the front which I assume you can leave up? Full de-badge cover up!!! 2011 blizz iii | PriusChat Drop him a PM for details?
Thanks again for the replies. I put about 1200 miles on the Prius since Thursday. Here are my observations. The seat, well, it wasn't too bad. I may be getting acclimated to it. At least the extended trip didn't seem to make me too sore. I'll still look into trying some of the options suggested above, but I think it's livable now that I've tweaked it a little bit. I didn't get pulled over at all because of the front plate issue, but I did cross the border yesterday and they asked about it. I told them I just got the car and was still working on getting it mounted and they didn't seem too worried about it. The prius performed absolutely great. I went down to Wisconsin for a meeting and came back through Minneapolis, and the interstate experience was terrific. I stayed in power mode most of the trip, just for my own peace of mind, and it was just delightful. I achieved 49.6mpg on the way back, and a lot of that was 76+ on I-94. The car just felt great and performed beyond my expectations. Yesterday I went up to Canada to spend the day fishing with my family and that trip was a success as well. I did hear the painful sound of bottoming out going over the man-made speed bumps at the dock parking lot, but other than that it was smooth sailing. I only had a couple of minor complaints, really. 1. I wish the cruise control was a bit more precise like most vehicles, and I'm not a huge fan of the on the column style switch. Pretty much every car I've had over the last decade, would allow you to hit the button once if you want to increase your speed by 1mph, twice by 2, and so on. That doesn't seem to be the case in the Prius, as it seems to be just an on/off type switch - you're either accelerating or you're not, and it's your job to try to hit the speed you want on the way up. If you want to just click up or down incrementally, well better luck next time, bub. Not a huge deal and maybe this is the same cruise system they use on all Toyotas, but it just seems a little cheap and basic. 2. My favorite feature of the car is bluetooth audio streaming, as my phone is always playing podcasts or streaming pandora, and it was a match made in heaven when I first got in the prius. My complaint is that sometimes when I'm streaming and I want to plug my phone in to charge via USB, I can't get it back to BT mode. I can understand if it thinks I'm trying to switch to USB, and me having to cycle back through the modes to tell it that I want bluetooth streaming, but a couple of times it flat out won't reconnect to bluetooth, and the only thing I can do is actually pull over and "power cycle" the car - turn it completely off and on again. It's really only happened twice, but it was pretty frustrating. When it works though, oh man it is awesome. Might be easiest to just buy a car charger for it I guess. So I guess that's my rambling story of the last 4 days in the prius. Overall, I am just completely smitten. The more acclimated I become with the car, the more I'm finding that it actually handles quite well, and is dare I say, fun to drive! I was enjoying some of Canada's windy dirt roads yesterday, while in power mode, and for some reason I felt myself wanting to zip through the corners like a rally car. Discretion prevailed of course, for the most part, but it was a lot of fun and handled very well. Love this car - thanks for reading.
