Past 300k on my 2007

I am way past 300k on my 2007 Prius. The odometer did not roll back to 0 and it is working.

I have had to replace: the engine, the high voltage battery, the catalytic converter, the interior heating and cooling fan, the inverter pump twice (1st time cheap Chinese one only lasted 13 months) and the rear hatch handle. This is all in the last 100k miles. Since I did it myself and used cheaper low mileage used or Chinese parts with the exception of the inverter pump after the Chinese part failed the out of pocket expense is very justified. The time is another matter.

However, I never go on a long trip without taking tools so there is the added cost of the worry about the ride.

Also, by cleaning out the engine with any engine cleaner, I use sea foam. I could have avoided replacing the catalytic convert and probably the engine. Expensive lesson learned.

I have had this car for almost five years and put 99k miles so the roughly $2,650 (less than .03 per mile) in out of pocket expense are worth it to me plus normal maintenance. Taken to a dealer probably not; the catalytic converter alone would have cost almost that much and a dealer wanted $1,500 just for the labor of replacing an engine.

Most of these repairs were done after 270k miles but the problems started much earlier. But if you clean out the engine at a minimum of every 100k I believe the problems can be avoided till 500k. I say this because I also took a 2001 to 270k miles but scraped it because I had blown the catalytic converter and being in California there was no cheap aftermarket cats available.

Bernie
Owner eLearnAid.com (we sell 12 volt batteries, traction batteries, air filters etc.) for the Prius and hybrid Camry.

 

Currently I just rebuild batteries with new modules and it is really the lowest cost per mile but only for a car that will be used for another 150k miles. Most owner who are just trying to get a couple more years out of their cars will not consider this option.

I used to get junk yard batteries at very reasonable cost but the person who was selling them to me died.

I spent way too much time tying to recover 50 to 75% of original capacity and gave up. But I still have a little hope so not going into it in detail but Toyota gave up on it also.

 

With the current price of gas I am really glad I put the time and money into keeping my 2007 on the road. The new hybrid batteries I sell are for other Prius owners who also want to keep their car on the road.
New Hybrid batteries

 

Yeah they are Toyota OEM gen 1. but they fit just fine 1/4 inch shorter. I installed them on a Camry 4 years and 8 months ago and here is what the customer has to say:
"The Camry hybrid is doing great. No issues with batteries it's still going strong. Thank you so much for your services. What is your business website so I can refer friends. " J. A., Lemoore, California

Frankly, I originally got the idea from the parts guy at Arts Automotive who told me they had been using gen 1 batteries for years with no problems on Gen 2 and newer Priuses.

For just new battery modules: Right now I have tons of old modules lying around so you get to keep your old modules and can sell the better ones to some one who wants to do a temporary fix. If you have a pack made after 2007-8 individual cells no longer fail (fewer impurities) and the whole pack is probably bad. Home depot has a box for recycling Nimh batteries by their service desk or with the current price of nickel you might be able to get something from a recycling place. Regardless, you are still saving money on not shipping modules back.

If you want a fully assembled pack you have to pay shipping both ways.

New Hybrid batteries

Also, I did not explain the connection between cleaning out an engine and blowing catalytic converters. Burning oil clogs up the catalytic converter so it can not work. This is due to the oil ring (bottom of the three piston rings) getting dirty and the passages below the oil ring. The passages allow the oil scraped off the cylinder wall to flow through the piston back to the crank case. I poured 4 ounces of Seafoam down each spark plug hole and let it sit for 2 days. Then drove the car for 20 miles with all the Seafoam that did not evaporate in the oil.
Then changed the oil.

That made a huge difference in the oil burn rate, and I was burning a lot of oil (a quart ever tank of gas) so I wanted a heavy handed approach where I treated the piston rings with 100% Seafoam high mileage. For normal cleaning just adding Seafoam to the oil and gas 100 to 300 miles before an oil change should do the job. See the instructions on the can.

Seafoam worked pretty good for me but I will not say it is the best engine cleaner. I have not tried them all!