Long-term reliability of electronics in Prius

Speaking of regular maintenance (and thanks for the advice on checking and lubing calipers, etc.), when reading CARFAX reports on vehicles for sale:
After the first scheduled maintenance at 10,000 miles, when should the succeeding oil changes be? If there are no oil changes or scheduled maintenance recorded until the car is checked for certification at 37,000 miles, should there be concerns about how the car was maintained? (lease vehicle)?

thanks,
still shopping!

 

Chalk up one sheepish amen from the guy who did exactly that, and now is full of heaviness.

Honest, I didn't completely ignore them. I checked now and then on how the pads were wearing, and the rotor surface on the side that's easier to see. I also made sure to read hobbit's testing results for why brake fluid replacement seems to be less important than for other cars.

But if I had been checking just a little more thoroughly, into the condition of slide pins, boots, and the hard-to-see side of the rotors, I might have one less project on my plate right now.

-Chap

 

You get an inexpensive diagnostic machine of your very own, and don't tell the mechanic so he doesn't feel bad about what he spent on his. There are a lot of threads in this forum on what the favorite choices are.

Also, depending on what generation of Prius you might be looking at, some of the computers can have vestigial ways of blinking information out to you on the dash lights if you jumper the right circuits together. All that info's in the manual.

As with the brakes, that probably would have postponed this day if I had been doing it regularly all along. By this point, though, I can open my driver's door and lift the free end and clunk it up and down owing to the amount of wear at the hinge. (The other 3 doors are just fine.) The disconcerting body-flex noises I've been hearing lately tend to sound like they are right behind and below my head, and I think are from the strike end of the floppy door gronching around against the pillar.

-Chap

 

Yeah you can barely catch a glimpse of the rotor inner face, through a gap at end of dust shield. On the rears I ended up taking them off, steel wooled them and put back on with fresh pads. Pads on the inside were only making about 50% contact, out towards the edge of rotor.

I'm not sure exactly why, but I suspect it was due to improper install after we were hit in the rear corner, and a body shop replaced the rear beam, that the cross pattern was not properly aligned with the backing plate pin. It did look a little mashed. Was a bit of a learning curve.

 

Mine had done the same narrow-contact-path thing in the front, and only on the invisible side. Others posted that it wasn't uncommon. Apparently it's just a thing they may do for some reason.

I got new pads and had the rotors turned, but for some reason the machinist (who had left when I came to pick them up) had been very conservative about taking off material ... so conservative that you could still see a hint of difference between the formerly clean and rusted areas ... so of course they're right back to doing that thing again. I wish the machinist had gone ahead and cut the rotors deeply enough for a totally uniform surface - there was plenty of thickness left to do it.

-Chap