Just need to vent...

You mean you can even get part diagrams? What's the secret?

I only can if I have already chosen some part to click on. Then I can see all fifty of the diagrams showing where that part appears in fifty different car models, one of which may be mine. And it's no help for finding any of the other parts shown on those diagrams.

 

Oh Parts diagrams would be great... I rely on Mendels ones he sent me. Olathe toyota website was brutal, search---->
breather hose, ventilation hose, PCV Valve Hose, throttle body Hose, lots of options and partial pictures....hybrid cooling hose, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7, but not until I called and asked Bo for help did I find the correct ones. only 2 left in Chicago and had to order them... the best part is....I walked in and bought 4 spark plugs. Guy tells me $72.50 total....I was like WTH, they are $9.00 each. "Oh you got the online price...ok"
$40 OTD then....MAN. Good thing I order online...

 

Huh.

I find the start page doesn't let me proceed until I enter a year and a model and a trim and a driveline. In the old system I tended to skip the trim and the driveline (partly because there's usually just one Prius driveline, and the "e grade" "l grade" "g grade" trim designations are not the same names they used when selling us the cars so who knows wth to put there) and then if there were variant parts I would see all of them, and the descriptions and "what this fits" entries would reveal which was which.

So once I fill in year and model and trim and driveline, I end up at the "All Products" page, with those "filters" preselected.




I can then ✕ out the active "Trim Level" and "Driveline" filters I was forced to specify, and just see things for 2010 and Prius. When I do that, "Trim Level" and "Driveline" drop-downs appear on the left, in addition to the "Category" and "Price" drop-downs. (I love the Price filter. I will so use it the next time I go to parts.toyota for a bit of retail therapy. "Today it would feel really great to buy a new car part between 50 and 75 dollars." Or those times somebody I kinda know is getting married, and I'm thinking about a price range for what to send.)

At that point, I'm still at the All Products page. I don't see a "Parts" link anywhere. But the Category drop-down at that level just has two entries, Accessories and Parts.

Once I choose Parts, the breadcrumbs at the top will change to Home / Parts.



And the new Category drop-down at that level will have the six big divisions I was earlier finding via And then the hamburger menu. And then if, say, I choose Electrical, I will have the breadcrumbs Home / Parts / Electrical, and the new Category drop-down has Abs & Vsc, Air Bag, Air Purifier, Antenna, and so on. Also, further down, Fcv Stack & Converter, which I am not sure my Prius ever had before.

 

parts.toyota.com was great for those, until a few hours ago.

 

Interesting. By dumb luck, the "grade" descriptions for the c model match the trim names used in the showroom.

...Though it cracks me up that Toyota just joined every other website in listing the c trims alphabetically rather than sequentially, or by popularity, or even the cylinder firing order for an in-joke:

Four
One
Three
Two

 

If you select a trim level, and then you ✕ out the trim level filter later, so now a trim level drop-down appears at the left, does the drop-down have the original choices of trim level, or just the one that you first chose and then ✕ed out?

 

If I x out the trim filter, all filter tiles disappear and I don't get any dropdown menus on the left. The car description in the red band at the top stays populated though.

If I x out the drivetrain, I keep the other filter tiles and am presented with category, driveline and price dropdowns.

Really, this makes me miss my old microfiche machine from when I worked in autoparts.

 

I think there might be some kind of session cookie that expires. (Not that I have any idea why there'd need to be.)

✕ing out a filter doesn't always make all the filter tiles disappear for me. It usually seems to just make that one go away (and turn into a new dropdown that has only the one originally selected choice).

Other times, they all go away.

Pick a part, and click "what this fits", and get only the summary text the old site used to show, like "This product fits 2 vehicle variants. TOYOTA : 1 model, 2 variants between 2002 and 2003"

The "show more" that used to expand that to show you what vehicle variants those are? Gone.

Scroll down the list of parts being shown, and notice that where descriptions would normally go, instead you have autogenerated, random variations of text like

Code:

Among the greatest advantages of purchasing Toyota OEM parts is that they provide a good fit for your 
Among the greatest benefits of buying Toyota OEM parts is that they provide a good fit for your
One of the most significant advantages of selecting Toyota OEM parts is that they provide a good fit for
There are numerous options for buying %s car parts for your
There are many alternatives for purchasing %s automobile parts for your
There are many choices for purchasing %s car or truck parts for your
There are lots of options for buying %s car parts for your

People building this system have worked hard on making it do things that have no connection to effectively searching a parts catalog.

 

I'm used to uber drivers just canceling the request shortly after I put in my trip order, so I'd been trying a feature where you schedule the trip in advance. So I'd been getting good service.

Then this morning the app showed the pre-arranged driver not moving at all, with arrival times going later and later. Wouldn't answer the phone.

So I cancel it and try to get the ride on-demand. A couple of customary cancellations, and then eventually a dude showed up in a model 3.

I was just a backseat passenger for 70 miles to the airport, not like I drove it but it was still neat to check the car out. I had previously been out for rides in an S and an X.

The 3 couldn't soak up the broken pavement as well as the other two, probably the weight and wheelbase difference. The seat coverings seemed nicer than I'd rememebered from the other models.

But much like the S, I couldn't sit comfortably in the back seat unless I assumed a bit of a slouch, otherwise my skull was directly on the glass ceiling. I'm bothered that neither car has as much rear headroom as our Prius c. Not like I have a lot of room in the Prius, those few mm make a real diifference- I don't have to sit funny.

 

Nope! Any posts I made since the PriusChat software started making local copies of outside images are all intact! Yay proxy.php!

 

Not a classic vent, might need a ref's call.

The first thing I ever bought on eBay was a Yamaha drum machine. When I got it, one of the pads was intermittent. The seller had mentioned this. Later it stopped completely.

Well I had fun with the thing for years and learned to work around the busted pad. It eventually fell into disuse as other hobbies came up.

On a wild after-dinner whim I got it down off the shelf, took the back cover off and discovered that I couldn't get at the main board because of a stupid 1"x1" extra board which was hosting a rotary encoder. The pins from the encoder part stretched through a 0.75"x 0.75" hole in the mainboard to meet this little board, which then had a 2" ribbon going back to the mainboard. So I had to desolder the whole thing to get the mainboard loose. Seemed like a wretched design. All I could think is they ran out of short-depth encoders and had to do this to fit a taller one.

Well it was worth it. I managed to find the broken wire and now it plays perfectly, which is far more than I can say about my drumming skills.

Now my daughter gets a shot at it!

 

This is aweful, isn't it. I liked parts.toyota.com. Now I can't make heads or tails of anything! Shame on you Toyota!

The same thing happened to a GM parts site when I had a Chevy Astro.

Sometimes I get so frustrate with car manufacturers, Toyota included, I feel like vowing I'll never buy a car every again.

 

How much sense does it make for a venting thread to have Like buttons on posts?

 

Good point.

It would need an "indignant harrumph" button even just to stay in the social engage-o-mat game, but probably better eliminated than adapted.

 

Ok. Back in the days before the old, usable parts.toyota.com came online, I used various Toyota dealer websites to look up parts. The best one I had found back in those days was the one at Village Toyota (apparently in Homosassa, Florida). They had their own part search site that had diagrams and showed part numbers and worked well, and after looking up the part I would sometimes buy it from them too, just to support them for providing the usable service.

Metro Toyota in Ohio was another good one, and in early Prius days they distinguished themselves with some special focus and deals on Prius parts.

With the mothership parts site now being useless, I went back to try some of my old standby dealership sites.

Now, all the ones I've tried simply serve up the same unusable system seen at the mothership. Individual dealers with working parts sites of their own seem to be a thing of the past, unless somebody can find one somewhere that hasn't been assimilated yet.

This seems like kind of a disaster-level event.

 

A Dremel flex shaft attachment has an inner core a little bit shorter than you'd think.

It has to be free to slide in and out of the square-hole driver nut on the motor shaft, to cope with the flex shaft's effective length changing when you bend it. Also, the inner core is short enough that if you try to flex the shaft too tightly, the core will slip out of the square fitting at one end or the other, and your bit stops spinning, so you learn not to do that. So it's the way it is for good reasons, and you don't want to mess with that too much.

But it's also short enough that any time the Dremel motor end is below the business end, the inner core may slide back toward the motor by gravity, coming out of engagement with the business end, and there you are with the motor freely spinning away and your bit doing nothing.

The manual even explains this, and suggests that a Dremel #2222 Rotary Tool Stand may be just the ticket, for you to hang your Dremel motor up above where you are working, so your flex shaft always slopes down. It is as if they imagine you always using your flex shaft in a nice tidy workspace with your #2222 Rotary Tool Stand at the ready, and not, say, in some cramped space you might need a Dremel flex shaft to get into.

It is always just when you have finally worked out your angles and approach, and the work is going just right, that the core disengages and leaves you staring at your stopped bit. Stop what you're doing and straighten and shake the shaft until it's going again, try to find another place the motor can go, then back to the work till it happens again. Prime venting material.

From the hardware store, a small 5/32" outside diameter fine wire gauge spring, trimmed down to a cm or so in length (a Dremel does nicely) will wind onto the end of the flex shaft core and still fit inside the motor shaft. Left with just a little overhang off the end, it seems to prevent the gravity-induced slippage while letting everything else that needs to happen happen (including the disengagement when the shaft is bent too tightly).

I think I have had this flex shaft on the order of thirty years and been venting at it the whole time, until trying this out for the first time today.

It doesn't even really add any steps to attaching or detaching the shaft on the motor. It just stops the square driving nut from being a separate piece to keep track of.

 

Seen for real in another thread:

 

Maybe the car poolers found a cheaper place to meet?