I will be taking in my Prius for its 15K service, minus the oil change, which I do myself, in a few days. I live in NE Ohio and we have brutal winters with lots of salt on the roads. It's an 07 Prius and has only seen one winter. According to the Prius service manual cleaning the brakes is not part of the service, just checking them. Do any Prius owners who live in winter climates have any first-hand experience with their brakes and cleaning them to keep rust, etc at bay since we Prius owners don't use the actual brakes like most cars. I did find the below advice which makes sense: "In an area with a lot of salt dumped on the roads during winter snow/ice, it would be reasonable to take the front calipers off, clean and lube the slide pins (Full floating caliper), and reassemble. It would also be reasonable to adjust the parking brake (Cable actuators tend to stretch and loosen over time) and the rear drum/shoe clearance." Also, I use the parking/emergency brake every time I park the car. Thanks for any feedback.
The only cleaning I do is about once a month while exiting the freeway I shift into neutral so that the friction brakes slow the car from about 65 MPH down to a stop. This cleans up the disks and pads. When rotating the tires I look at the brakes, but since my car is not quite a year old they still look new. The car wash I use also cleans the underbody so that helps too. I'm in Minnesota and they use a lot of salt here.
