A friend of mine is having transmission issues. Can someone help?

I'm not, it's just very hard to find a gen2 at that mileage now.

And if a shop told you the transaxle had 160k miles, it probably would make one think twice about it.

It's the same when a hv battery seller says the battery only has 60k miles on it, how would you possibly know?

 

I wonder what fails on the transaxles, and if early and subsequent fluid changes might have helped? And then: maybe someone did change the fluid, but decided they knew better, used something other than Toyota ATF-WS? Who knows.

Toyota continues to insist the fluid is "lifetime", and instills this mindset in the dealerships.

 

I'd go with the Toyota fluid. If it's never been changed, asap.

 

maybe someone changed the fluid religiously with toyota oem, and it still failed. maybe they drove it hard, maybe it had a very small defect from the factory, maybe 220k is average life, maybe...

 

From what I read at Luscious Garage the average life of the transmission of Gen 2 was between 150k Miles and 250K miles.

 

Not really. It can not read the sub codes.

A quick search of Car-Part.com--Used Auto Parts Market shows about 800 transmissions with less than 100K available nationwide. This shows that the failure rate on the Gen II tranny is very low.

They have seen a small number of failures in that the range. The vast majority will go much, much farther.

This does not match what Luscious Garage has found. They say the car will loose the ability to charge the battery.
Gen 2 Prius (2004-2009) Transmission Failure, P0AA6, P0A92, P0A7A - Luscious Garage | Hybrid Specialists

Here are a couple of pages from the repair manual.
http://share.qclt.com/%E4%B8%B0%E7%94%B0%E6%99%AE%E7%91%9E%E6%96%AF%E5%8E%9F%E5%8E%82%E8%8B%B1%E6%96%87%E6%89%8B%E5%86%8Cpdf%E6%A0%BC%E5%BC%8F/repair%20manual/04pruisr/05/21bpm/0a92606.pdf

http://share.qclt.com/%E4%B8%B0%E7%94%B0%E6%99%AE%E7%91%9E%E6%96%AF%E5%8E%9F%E5%8E%82%E8%8B%B1%E6%96%87%E6%89%8B%E5%86%8Cpdf%E6%A0%BC%E5%BC%8F/repair%20manual/04pruisr/05/21bpm/0a7a325.pdf

Before spending a whole bunch of money you should be very sure of the problem. Buy a proper code reader. Follow the trouble shooting steps. Do not skip to the end.

A cheap Mini VCI. Mini VCI 16 Pin OBD2 Diagnostic Scanner Cable for Toyota Tis Techstream US Sale | eBay

A better MIni VCI with newer firmware. Mini VCI J2534 OBD2 USB Interface for Toyota Firmware V2 0 4 Software V10 10 018 | eBay

A much better scanner by VXDIAG Vxdiag VCX Nano for Toyota Tis Techstream V10 10 018 with SAE J2534 Windows XP | eBay

Brad

 

Edit, double post deleted.