Melchior's 2007 white "Comfort" Gen 2

This thread is so quiet because there's just nothing to report. I have never had such a reliable car (although, in fairness, I've never bought such a modern car, nor have I paid so much for a car).

The only update is another oil change a couple of days ago at 234,889 km. It has needed for nothing, just keeps on doing the job. I see absolutely no reason not to keep it indefinitely.

 

Update, not a good one. But nothing mega serious.

Since owning cars for about 16 years or so, I have never bothered to rotate tyres. I used to be such a hooligan that tyres didn't long long enough anyway but I keep reading on here that one should and as I had some golden free time, I went ahead. Lo and behold, what did I find?!

Mud, for starters. Quite a lot of it! Mostly behind the lip of the wheel arch.


And for fun, a broken spring.


Judging by the rust on that, it hasn't broken recently. It passed its APK last year with no mention of this (obviously, it's a fail. The tester did however mention the low rear pads which, almost a year later, are still not low enough to need changing...) so either they missed it or ignored it?!

They look pretty easy to replace so I went online and bought a pair of Monroe springs for something like €45 each which is a very good price. The spring on the other side is OK but with suspension parts I rather replace them in pairs. For a brief moment I considered lowering springs (there's still some of that old hooligan in me) but managed to get a grip and remind myself why I'm running this car.

Current ODO is 237,849 km

For reference, this video looks VERY helpful when replacing Gen 2 Prius rear springs:

Oh and I nearly forgot - For some reason I still haven't figured out, my car was featured as Pistonhead's "Reader's Car of the Week"! I've a thread running over there about it - there are much more deserving cars but for some reason they picked mine. Reader's Car Of The Week: Toyota Prius | PistonHeads

 

Unfortunately Photobucket has broken The Internet and probably all of my pictures on this thread aren't showing up anymore :-( I just wanted to check in to say:

- Still got the car. Yesterday the ODO showed 246810
- Rear spring replacement was done, quite an easy job. Car sits a bit higher at the rear now
- Front brakes are squeaking whilst driving at low speed. I removed, cleaned and re-fitted the pads but this made no difference. Whilst there is plenty of meat left on them, the discs are quite worn. I suspect it should have had new discs when the pads were last changed, which I think was at about 150,000km in 2013 (2 years before I bought it). For now I am ignoring this problem

Apart from the squeaking brakes, the car still drives perfectly. I still plan to keep it for another 2-3 years at the least.

 

Been a while since I updated this!
Last year I fitted new front discs and pads; the discs were really very worn and the squealing I mention above was being caused by the lip worn into the edge of them. It drives a lot better than it did with the old discs and the fuel usage went down too. Not long after the new brakes, I got 1000km from a tank, it took some doing, but really impressive.

Last week I had my first real problem with the car. With 268524 km on the odometer, a Check Engine light appeared. I disconnected the battery for a while, in the hope it was a glitch but it re-appeared. I bought an ODB reader and find a P0138 stored. This is the O2 sensor (Bank 1, Sensor 2 - so the one downstream/after the catalyst) stuck high and indeed when doing live monitoring of the sensor, it is stuck at 0.96v, occasionally drops to 0v after coming off the accelerator. But it never wavers around between those values, so definitely looks like it's broken.

I have a long trip coming up, leaving on Friday, so really hope I can get a new sensor from Toyota before that as I don't fancy doing 800km with a duff O2 sensor, thinking what it might do to the catalyst...

 

Thanks Patrick. Ever helpful My thoughts were that if the sensor is giving bad readings, the air:fuel ratio might get messed up and therefore damage the catalyst.

Anyway I have ordered a new sensor from Toyota directly, it should arrive today so I am going to fit it before loading the car up for the trip. Last night I gave the old one a tug with a spanner and was very pleased to find it was not seized and undid quite easily. By the way, Toyota wants €191 for the new one!! I faltered, but given how little this car has cost me, and that 3rd party lambda sensors so often do not have the plug included, plus I have so little time for this fix, I went ahead. Hopefully in a couple of hours' time, I'll have done the replacement and the CEL will be dark...