I purchased a use 01 Prius a couple of weeks ago and in doing so obliged every known craigslist do not do. Bought the car sight unseen ...... check, paid with a money order ...... check, bought from a person with no know mechanical or technical understanding of the car ...... check, three strikes and you win right ? It was listed with new tires and battery (12v) and was running great and just stopped dead in traffic. He had it towed to a station and they came up with P1325 but no sub codes and got a fix quote of $1,000 ~ $3,000 so he decided to bail. The HV battery was said to have been replace by the previous owner when he bought it 1-1/2 years ago but that was as much as he knew. So I did what any wise second had car buyer would do and said I'll take it. $1,200 + $175 for towing, what could go wrong. The car arrive and looked more or less nice with near mint interior and a good number of paint touch-up needed. The car was locked out from starting and had not been started for over 2 months so I ordered up the mini-vac right quick and pulled P1325-287 and went looking for an inverter. I did pull the trans fill plug and got a sample of the trans fluid which looked clean-ish with no burnt smell, so far so good. I found an parts car at the local junk yard, it had been sitting for a couple of years as they had refused to work on it (afraid of the HV) so I showed them how to pull the plug. With the used inverter installed the car started right up. I did the artsautomotive battery load test and came up with a maximum of .19V between cells and 4minutes and 40 seconds run before the engine started, not so bad. I ran up and down some hills around my house and MG1, MG2 and the inverter temps were all good at around 110 degrees F. No shuttering when starting off so is there anything else I need to check out or look at to insure MG2 is in good forum ? I did buy the trans out of the junk yard dog for a spare as the car is from flat land iowa and only had 90K miles. Thanks Tim
It sounds like you are doing well. I suggest that you drain the transaxle ATF and drop the transaxle pan so that you can clean the pan and magnet. The transaxle will need 5 quarts of Toyota ATF T-IV, a new pan gasket, and a new aluminum washer for the drain plug should you remove the plug prior to removing the pan.
I had a similar experience with a 2005 a week ago. The seller had a bad battery that I tried to help fix, the car had 233k miles. Asked if I wanted to buy it at 2500 and I said no (car had way too many miles). In hindsight, I think I should have bought it, just as an experiential car, see what problems would occur for it to reach 300k. SM-N900P ?
