Bought a 2008 Prius - Shaking wheel/odd Squeaks

Hi guys,

I bought a 2008 Prius a couple of months ago - its a 2nd Gen with 73,000 km (45,000 miles) on it. Currently it gets approximately 23 - 24km/l which is about 54 - 56 US mpg which is awesome however I do drive quite frugally. I paid $7000 NZD which is about $4600 USD.

I first ran into a couple of issues with the brake actuator and some noise underneath the car which the dealer fixed (replaced actuator, dry bushings). However I still have a few more issues that the car dealer doesn't think are problems and I'm wondering if anyone could give me a bit of advice from my descriptions and a couple of videos.

1. In the morning when the engine turns on its rather loud and the car seems to shake a little bit - its noticeable but nothing particularly bad - not sure if this is normal or a misfire perhaps? I have also noticed that the oil is overfilled by about 1 inch which I've heard is bad for 2nd Gen Priuses - is that right? Could this be causing it?

I've recorded a video of the engine warm up below:

2. I get an odd squeaky noise coming from the front when the car is warm and going slow speeds - its rather odd - it can be heard when the car is going forward in this video:

3. Finally a really odd one - I've noticed that the steering wheel can be a bit harder to turn than usual and at times when I swing it to one side when the car is still it can start shaking a little bit as per video below (bit hard to catch this one as it doesn't happen all the time):

Other than the issues I have experienced I actually love the car and am definitely a Prius convert. I hope I can get the above issues resolved if they are issues at all - looking forward to hearing from you guys

 

Thanks for that NavyPDX - was the sound that you experienced the same? Do you know if those repairs were more to just remove the noise or were they actual issues that can cause problems beyond noise in the future?

 

Bump!

 

Just this morning also had an issue after turning on the car with the battery showing as completely empty (i.e. no bars) for about 10 seconds before the normal bars popped back in, is this normal? Have not seen it before.