In the market for a Prius, should red trangle display along with other dash lights at pre-startup

I am in the market for a Prius, I went to check out a 2005 with 272,000. When I first turned on the car the lights on the instrument panel, check engine light ect. lit up momentarily as most vehicles do to test that the lights work. Well the most important one (the "red triangle of death" I guess it's called), did not light up to test. Is it supposed to light up like the others initially do? If not how do I know the light is actually working or has not been disabled to hide something? This is a one of those small independent lots in the not so great part of town so I was on guard and trying to be on the lookout for anything fishy. The price is only $2000, it almost seemed to good to be true. I did take it for a test drive and it seemed to drive ok. The dealer also provided a clean Car-fax report.

Any help with this or any pre-purchase pointers would be most welcome, Thanks

 

Ok great that is what I was looking for! Just to confirm the triangle does NOT normally light up at startup with the other check engine lights correct? So I guess there is not way to test the battery then? Even the dealer said they can not test the state of the battery.

 

Any other things I should check out before I buy? I don't even know what all the fluids are for on the thing!?

 

Thanks for the A/C test idea.
Where do I find that testing device?

 

Thank you that Toyota Owners site did show the service history as much of the service was done at the dealer. As far as the fluids it seems as though there are 2 coolant reservoirs?

 

on amazon it says: "Works on all 1996+ cars and light trucks sold in the USA (except hybrid or electric vehicles) "? Must work on yours? Do they have these in Auto parts stores? I don't what to have to wait for it to be sent out as I was going to check out the car again tomorrow

 

Yes it was mostly routine maintenance. Although I did not see that the battery was ever replaced which makes me think it is about due with 12 years on the original battery?

 

on amazon it says: "Works on all 1996+ cars and light trucks sold in the USA (except hybrid or electric vehicles) "? Must work on yours? Do they have these in Auto parts stores? I don't what to have to wait for it to be sent out as I was going to check out the car again tomorrow

Thanks for the warning, do you know this form experience? Have you had problems with a high mileage 2G Prius? If so what problems should I be looking for? I realize that I will probably need to at minimum recondition the battery at some time and am willing to tinker with that. Yes I am budget minded and I'm looking for my best overall cost per mile and hypermiling I guess is kind of a hobby. I was and still am a bit skeptical that anything with all those electronics could be reliable but the Prius seems to have proven to be a dependable vehicle for many over 500,000 miles which is impressive. It seems as though those that are driven more frequently do better (at least the battery anyway) so the higher the mileage the less it has been sitting around unused which will deteriorate the battery.
I'm still undecided, maybe I should just hold out for a Jetta TDI which can get over 50mpg without all the complications of the electronics, but until then I'm stuck with a 3/4 ton pickup.

 

WIll this A/C test still work in cold weather or will the A/C even turn on in cold temps?

 

Yeah I may be getting confused with the Jetta TDI's. I should have said "some" instead of "many"

 

Well finally an update here. I did not get the one with 272,000 miles. I did however find a 2006 with just under 200,000. I test drove it, did the A/C test for the battery recommended above and scanned it for historic and pending codes with a ELM 327 bluetooth code scanner. The A/C test did bring the battery down into the purple and the ICE kicked in at about 5 min. So I felt satisfied enough to go head with the purchase but the seller could not find the title so we decided to meet the next afternoon at the DMV to finalize the deal. So I returned home forgetting that I had left my blue tooth code reader pluged into his Prius. So the next morning on his way to work a bunch of dash lights came on including the red triagle. The car shut itself down and he turned the car off and back on again and limped it the last mile to work. After work he had his mechanic check the code with his code reader and it showed over 20 codes having to do with “communication between different modules within the system. His mechanic thinks my code reader disrupted the car’s internal communications causing the codes. He was able to clear the codes and the car ran fine again, but it then threw a code for something AC related. Could have leaving the ELM 327 plugged into the car caused this? I have used this reader on other cars including a few of the Priuses I looked at and never any problems. The theory seems possible, the part I find hard to believe is that it would be enough to actually disable the car!?

Any thoughts?