Need advice- Brake actuator repair cost

Well at 25 in Texas I bet ya feeling it . An old Corolla will carry ya decades with almost no maintenance. It's been the number one selling small car throughout the world for almost 40 years thisgen Prius is part of that family. But generally reserved for the grown-ups. Seriously. The Corolla in Yaris have always been for the younger crowd as they don't have the batteries n electrical systems that are daunting. And younger folks usually don't have their faculties in place just yet for this kind of complexity not being ugly that's called reality . Mine get fixed I have a few . Choices ..... But before I started messing with these older Prius I had been driving regular toyoda's about 40 years Corolla celica hi lux etc all of those making 400 plus thousand miles.

 

The good thing is your car is somewhat low miles for a 2nd Gen Prius. These cars can go 300k miles with little maintenance.

The 2 items you mentioned are the most costly and will fail on the car, the hybrid battery and brake actuator. Both will run you around $3000 for new replacements.

So if you think about spending $6000 plus tires and maintenance, you're all in at $7500. Assuming the car is in good shape and not burning much oil, what car can you buy for $7500 that will have most of their expensive repairs sorted out? Answer is probably there isn't a car for $7500

 

My 2009 with 157k is still on original battery. Had to replace the brake actuator. After i bought it last year with 147k, i replaced all fluids, water pump (preventive), inverter coolant pump (failed), brake actuator (was making sound, no code), spark plugs etc and now the front brake pads/rotors.

Check with your local mechanic on how much he will charge to do the brake actuator + all fluids and clean the hybrid battery fan (most important). Get the actuator from local dealer. Order it online and pick it up. Also shop around with various dealers. When i bought it last year, it was like ~$1.3k.

I would say keep it. Even if you need to replace the battery. Still reliable than most of the other cars.

 

What you do is is you go out and buy one of these newfangled cars that are all sitting in shops waiting for engines Kia GDI Hyundai GDI Chevrolet

 

And you'll be running back to your old Toyota after messing with above type vehicles . Or you might get seriously lucky but I kinda doubt . Car wizard .... Check him out . Hoovies .

 

145k miles is very low for a Prius and why worry about the hybrid battery (reconditioned replacements are just around $1k) some even last more than 200k+ before needing replacement. You don't know your luck. Never ever go to a dealer for maintenance, they will screw you (big time!)

I would worry about fluid maintenance once it reached over 200k miles, some people are paranoid about this stuff but anything can happen to a car regardless of maintenance..

 

One would hope an independent mechanic would provide a bit of a price break on changing all the fluids at once, not just add up the price for each service done independently. After all, the car only needs to go on the lift once to drain all of the fluids. Fill the transaxle while it is still up in the air, and all the others close them up and put it back on the ground before filling from the top. Mechanic will have the tools to pump down the ICE loop and refill without introducing air. How long would it take an efficient mechanic to do all of this, an hour or two?

I really wish I had a lift. Any service like this it takes me a while to run the car up on boards, then jack it up, then place the jacks, then carefully lower onto the jacks. A little less time in reverse, since there is no time needed to center the floor jack puck on the butterfly - already there. Shops with lifts have the car in the air in something like 5 minutes, and no crawling around on the ground to do so. I guess ramps might be faster for me, as long as the service doesn't need the wheels off.

 

Was $3600 for all of that? That's a pretty good price for a dealer to do that much work.