How to jack up 2009 prius?

Here’s a verbal description:

1. Securely chock both rear wheels, fore and aft. Release parking brake.

2. Raise front with a floor jack, using Owners Manual described jacking point. (On gen 2 that’s quite far back if I’m not mistaken. You may need to initially run the front up onto low-rise ramps, to get the jack under and have enough headroom to operate the handle effectively)

3. Settle front onto jack stands. (At the points in my pic)

4. Raise rear with floor jack, using Owners Manual described jacking point.

5. Settle rear onto jack stands. (At the points in my pic)

6. Verify all four jack stands are solidly supporting the car. (If your slab is not sufficiently planar, you may find one jackstand slightly loose. If so raise the car again slightly, and place wood shims as needed (under base of jack stand). In my situation the left/rear corner always needs 1/4” of shim.)

7. Reverse the steps to bring the car down.

 

Owners Manual is free at Toyota.com.

Use of floor jack. Obtain low profile high reach floor jack for low vehicles like a Prius.


After raising one end with floor jack, insert jack stands at locations on sides with notches


Lower floor jack slowly on to jack stands

Be sure jack stands are recent and solid. Some cheap Harbor Freight (among others) have been known to fail. Personally I keep the floor jack in place and lightly touching on the end I may be under. However full weight remains on jack stands.

 

That instruction is for scissor jack though, not safety stands.

If you place the Toyota supplied scissor jack thus, start raising, you'll see the bearing point is not on the seam, but on the sheet metal behind (and with a single use, it dimples that sheet metal, even on the lighter back end). The notch on the scissor jack cups around the seam, just brushes it at most.

That seam is the same for it's whole length; there's no reinforcement at the scissor jack placement point, just the pair of notches to ID it.

FWIW, I've had ours on 4 corners of jack stands, as I've described, at least 30 times now..

 

Jack stands work at those points. I had two gen2s and have recently worked on one using the notches for jack stands.

Also works on gen3s.

 

I used the seams for jack stand support once, didn't like the way it looked/felt (skittish and flimsy, a knife-edge). The points I'm advocating are heavy gauge, rounded, conform well to jack stand cradles. To each their own, though.

Front/Left corner, showing the scissor jack spec'd location and where I place jackstand:



Works on gen 2/3.

 

I'm also a visual learner but; if you never get out and just do things - You'll NEVER be able to convert words into "mind's eye visuals" in your mind. That's how us OLD FARTs had to do it. The more you do this the easier and faster things start to make sense. If all you do is look for YouTube videos; you'll just be a person that reads, but doesn't comprehend things.
When I was training new recruits, some has really good memory but zero comprehension. The smart-a**es usually get it; the people that just memorize things and spit it back at you - rarely gets it. They spend their lives regurgitating stuff, but is clueless on the consequences of their actions. They usually test well, but lack the ability to solve REAL problems; because they don't understand the underlying details. This goes back to; "Those that can DO; those that can't TEACH". I've meet brilliant people on both sides of the fence. What I've found is that people that can do both; either hate the politics involved and/or likes to keep their "hands clean".

YMMV

 

I've got a similar problem, trying to sort out chords and melody to a song, on piano. If I figure out the opening chord, and take it from there, it usually sticks. If on the other hand, I look it up the chords, say on Ultimate Guitar (internet wiki of song chords), it doesn't "stick" nearly as well. Optimum seems to try the best you can, and peek as needed. And the ones I peek for, I tend to mess up, eternally.

 

Mendel, you seem offended despite my efforts to point out how kind the efforts were by everyone. I’ll take this time to re-affirm how much I appreciate everyone’s efforts, especially yours - I’ve learned a lot reading your posts over the years and I thank you, again, for that.

With respect to my opinion though, as we’re all entitled to have one around here - the fact that it’s 2025 and we’re still reading this question frequently and contributing to long-threads on it for the last 16 years, is the proof of my point.

For something so safety-sensitive, it might be nice to have something like this “Spoonfed” as you put it. I think if anything ever required a nice spoon-feeding for our novices, maybe this might be the hill to die on as they say.

People have died getting this wrong. Yet, 16 years later it’s still a discussion.

Thanks again for your meaningful contributions and everyone’s good intentions.

I’m just trying to support the original poster and many, many, many people who have come before him still confused after looking at the illustration in their manuals.