OK silly me. How do I refill that transaxle fluid that came out when I replaced the half axle?

Not seeing a dipstick or fill tube. I read something online that says there's a bolt hole on the side somewhere, like a lawnmower, and you fill it up until fluid comes out the bolt hole. Where is the bolt, and where do you fill?

 

LOL, the service manual is worse than useless - because it takes you 30 minutes of digging through it to figure out it's useless. All it shows is a line drawing of the transaxle out of the car, with no reference to which side is up/down/front/back. And it's basically a round doughnut connected on each side to either the gas or electric engines, so very symmetrical.

Look at this pic, then open the hood of your Prius and point to the transaxle fill tube.

 

That makes sense. I just can't tell whether this is looking at the transaxle from the front or back, and I'm just assuming it's pictured with the top facing up. Here's the very next pic in the manual:

Ignoring the "engine hunger", how could one remove the transaxle like this? If I'm not mistaken, this is a pic of it flipped upright, but how are you supposed to accomplish that when it's wedged between the two engines? I assume you pull an engine to gain access, but strange that they skip all those steps. Being ignorant, are they flipping it upright from the right or left? I guess I'll figure it out, but this manual is a mess. Seems like there'd be a simple description of changing transaxle fluid with a pic showing you how to do it with the engine/trans in the car with the inverter in place.

 

that helps! I planned to start looking near the back of the engine. I'll update when I'm done. thanks.

 

Got it. Just ran a hose down the same way that strange guy in the video did. Unfortunately, the hose I had was the same diameter as the hole, so none could leak out until I pulled the hose out, then more than I wanted to lose leaked out. Messy.

Car drives fine now. The wheel bearing, then half axle, fixed the growling noise. I just need to tighten the tie rod nut and pin it, then check the torque on the axle nut and stake it, and this one's ready to sell.

 

Yeah, not sure what he's trying to accomplish with all that nonsense. The best YouTube tech I've seen is on my diesel trucks - Diesel Tech Ron - a real class act who helped countless thousands of people. Sadly, he died in a car wreck a few years ago. You could just tell he was a great guy. His vids are still the gold standard for our trucks.