Bought used 2009 Touring-Rust Issues

Hi everyone!

My dad and I just got a 2009 Touring that looks almost immaculate on the inside and exterior with a Carfax showing constant maintenance being done. This car spent the majority of its life in the Chicago area and that's where we are living. We'd never seen so many entries for routine service on any Carfax. This was enough for my dad to decide we didn't need to do a pre-purchase inspection or look at the undercarriage even though I asked to before paying the dealer a cent. Dealer was not at all interested in showing us the undercarriage either. So, I went with it, it wasn't my decision. Price was $7500. 164k miles. Some mild to moderate damage from accidents. Car drove just about flawlessly, felt like a new car. Opening up the hood showed us an engine that looked really good. Once we had the car back, I was able to park it in a way where it was easier for me to look at the back of the undercarriage.

It looks a lot like poster Joe Wall's undercarriage. I've tried to get pics under the front, but it was a lot more difficult. My main concern is safety and then longevity. If we have to put several grand into fixing the rust and the car lasts another 100k miles or more with whatever needed maintenance, we're ok with that. I'd like to drive it some places this weekend, but I'm not gonna chance driving 50 miles to and then another 50 miles from Six Flags if there's a chance something could give out. Thanks for any advice, it is much appreciated.

 

Thanks for the insights. Is there some guide on here about rust? I've tried to find something online and not had any luck. My last car was an IL car that moved to Scottsdale and then I sent it back to IL. No real rust on it. 2004 PT Cruiser was driving really well and cylinder 4 wouldn't hold compression anymore, so Firestone told me it was internal engine failure and to see if some other shop could replace the engine. This after I just had some sensor changed over there two weeks prior. Only 71k miles too. So, I'm just trying to do a lot more due diligence with this Prius.

Are you saying that the rust on my Prius is mainly on the suspension parts? No one I know around here really give rust much thought. If stuff becomes an issue to where something crucial breaks, they just sell the car for $500 or whatever. Probably a very wrong approach to car maintenance I'm guessing.

 

Guessing that's a sway bar that's flaking? The PT Cruiser I had with the engine failure is the first car I owned in 17 years and had no rust, so this is all new to me. Just trying to get some objective idea of what I need to watch for. Hopefully I can use this car for as many miles as possible. There's some rust in what I have labeled as the 15th pic on my hardrive that looks particularly corrosive. I think that's on the side just underneath where the rear passenger door is.

 

Thanks for all the info. I looked up as much as I could about various Prius models and their usual problems. 2009 seemed a lot better bet than 2010 or 2011. Those two years make up a lot of the used market. The big problem I read about with 2009 was the headlights. I'm definitely curious what else I could be faced with. My 2004 Touring PT Cruiser was filled with surprises. The engine always had rough idling since about a month of owning it. Sun Devil chalked it up to engine mounts and I had two replaced. Never really went away but it was just about unnoticeable before the engine stopped holding compression. It was outside of Autonation's warranty during the first incidents. Autonation fixed a lot of stuff, put a new water pump in and a bunch of other stuff. They didn't bother to fix the trunk though.

Two years ago the market was so bad that I just stuck with it, nothing else in the Phoenix metro area was close to being 6k and I was on a minimal budget. 2009 Priuses don't seem to have the long list of complaints that these old Cruisers do..hah

Car dealers have to follow very little in the way of rules and consumers have almost no recourse with these used cars. This Prius with its extremely long Carfax report of inspections and servicing seemed like the closest thing to a sure bet in terms of something that could have arrived at the dealer with minimal problems. Some dealers around here have dozens of reviews saying they sold people cars with severe problems or that broke when driving away from the sale. I realized very quickly that it was a lot of caveat emptor. Just a crapshoot. These dealers wouldn't be able to stay in business if they thoroughly inspected everything. All they need to do is get people to drive off and not have anything go wrong within the tiny warranty period mandated by the state. I bet some dealer ends up buying my Cruiser for a few hundred bucks and then puts it on their site for 5k. It's still very drivable and looks great. Someone could drive it for a couple weeks and maybe not have the engine go out on them if it's as bad as Firestone said.

Priuses are priced very differently from Corollas I noticed. Corolla with similar miles in similar condition is going to cost 2-3k more at least. A lot of people still believe you need to pay Toyota 4-5k to replace the battery at some predefined point.

I drove the Prius to a couple forests today. Handled really well so long as the road wasn't all warped. It always seems very finesse and in control of itself, not like the Cruiser where I always felt like I had to work to keep it on track and to make turns. Hopefully I hear back from some places and can really assess the state of the car. Have someone apply Fluid Film on everything unless you guys here have another idea that would work better.

 

Well guys, I got a good report back from the local mechanic. We walked under it and he said while it looks pretty bad, nothing has been compromised. If I understood correctly, he said the flaking on the bar was some previous coating. They'll put the Fluidfilm on for me and their car wash does offer an underside option with some rust protectant. I'll have to see if there are any other instructions I should give them. It'd be great if I had the means and the know-how to do some of the hands-on maintenance talked about here and elsewhere on this forum. Maybe it's something I'll be able to do if we ever get the garage in the family house fixed up.

I've seen the batteries at Project Lithium and Exclusively Hybrid. Will the car start to get really sluggish when the battery is giving out? We test drove a dirty 2010 Prius and the thing was incredibly sluggish. This 2009 speeds up very fast, quite a bit more than that 2004 Turbo PT Cruiser. Guess I should see about an oil change too maybe. Forgot to save the Carfax while I still had access.

 

Hi All,

Wanted to issue an update. I've only driven the car maybe a couple hundred miles since getting it. Now I'm getting the red triangle of death with check engine light on. Saw some kinda fluid dripping in the Meijer lot last night but no engine light on til today. Initially I also had the yellow brake light on that looks kinda like an exclamation point along with the VSC light. They stopped coming on with my second and third starts where I didn't move the car. Checked the oil stick and there was barely any oil on it. Less oil ended up on it with the second and third checks. Last oil change was in June and only 1000 miles ago by the previous owner. I've had the VSC kick in for about one second twice on the same road in the same spot where the car swerved a little bit on a curve. Car hasn't been driving weird or anything. Car has 164.8k miles on it. I think it was around 164.6k miles at purchase.

From the Carfax history, these were the most notable items:


oil changed 1000 miles ago June 2023

spark plugs replaced and tune up 100k

recommended maintenance 86.4k, cabin air filter replaced/cleaned

recommended maintenance 81.3k

Steering shaft repaired/replaced 76.9k miles

recommended maintenance 7/12/2011

recommended maintenance 30k

recommended maintenance 25k

recommended maintenance 19k

recommended maintenance 15k

recommended maintenance 10k

recommended maintenance 5k


The electrical system and steering system was checked a few times. Tires rotated a bunch. Alignment done some. Lots of work done at the dealership. I'm guessing I shouldn't drive this several miles to a mechanic. There's one down the street maybe 300 feet. Well, hopefully it's nothing too terribly difficult to fix. Thanks for any insighyts.

 

I checked the oil on a little bit of an incline with the engine off for a bit. Not sure how that factors in, but I know oil levels can look off if the incline is too steep.