I Bought a Prius

I’d like to buy a used Prius someday. My daily driver is a lowly 2000 Toyota Echo That I’ve had since it was a year old. It’s been hit twice now and I hit a deer with it and it has 266,000 on the clock so it’s the butt of many jokes here in the tiny town I live in but it keeps on going and I keep on driving it. Lol, I’ve done 51 full synthetic oil changes on it now. I have two Ford trucks also but the Echo is my go to vehicle most of the time.

7acres said:

So yeah, I'm no longer working from home and have a 20 mile commute (mostly highway). My normal vehicle is an Xterra which gets lousy gas mileage. ... Drove it home yesterday from work and the display calculated the trip home cost me $0.96.

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Back in 2000, I tried to get my wife to go with something that got more than 17mpg. She was adamant she wanted an SUV (4Runner, V6). When she rolled it on the interstate (walked away from the accident), we got her a sedan that gets 40+MPG on the highway. When that vehicle was hit by a landscape trailer in a filling station, she was adamant to the rental car company she needed something capable of hauling her full sized Roland keyboard. They handed her keys to a small SUV. She couldn't give that SUV back to the rental company fast enough when her car was fixed!! She literally said "I haven't had it 10 days, and I have had to refuel it twice! Fuel economy in this thing is horrible." Mind you, the rental SUV fuel economy wasn't any worse than the V6 4Runner, it was basically the same.

begreen said:

15K/yr Wow, that's a lot of mileage.

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My typical year these days is ~20k miles. (60+ miles per day, every work day, plus errands)

Several years ago, when I had a job in an office 10 miles from home, and my company decided to close my office and let those in that office "work from home". They pitched it as "Look at all the money you'll save not commuting!". At that point, I was filling my vehicle once a month for $40 (650 miles to a tank). The company didn't offer to kick in any $$$ for upgrading my internet speed, or the extra electricity working from home would need to keep the lights on and run the A/C to keep me and their PC comfortable 10 months out of the year... (they covered these expenses for the office location out of their pocket. ) At that point, fuel was cheap, and refueling was costing me $40/mo. That $40 savings could only buy me an extra 300kWh of electricity, which doesn't help my internet speed, and only covers about 50% of the working hours running A/C. The bean counters were trying to do a great "cost shift" there, but I saw through their smoke screen.

7acres said:

I'm already improving my driving efficiency. My MPG is up 5mpg just in the 2 days owning it. My one-way commute has gone down from 96¢ to 77¢. I was paying about $4.50 in my previous vehicle.

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Are you comparing apples to oranges? Was your total daily commute (20 miles) really costing $4.50 in the Xterra?

Where2 said:

Back in 2000, I tried to get my wife to go with something that got more than 17mpg. She was adamant she wanted an SUV (4Runner, V6). When she rolled it on the interstate (walked away from the accident), we got her a sedan that gets 40+MPG on the highway. When that vehicle was hit by a landscape trailer in a filling station, she was adamant to the rental car company she needed something capable of hauling her full sized Roland keyboard. They handed her keys to a small SUV.

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I don’t know how to tell you this, so I’ll just come out and say it, I think we may have married the same woman.

A few years back, my wife rolled her Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo on the expressway at 70 mph. One of those spectacular movie scene rollovers, where the thing just goes over and over and over, until you’ve lost count of how many times it rolled. It landed on it’s roof in the end, and was obviously totaled. Two days later we bought her a new Jaguar, which was then rear-ended by an un-insured driver in an F350 with plow hydraulics on the front, who didn’t see her or the stop sign at which she was stopped (or apparently the opposing traffic that had her waiting at the stop sign). $30k in damage, since it was a 5 or 6 week old Jaguar, they wouldn’t total it. We sold that car a year or two later, and bought her an Audi, in which she hit a deer on the same expressway, while doing 65 mph. Got that repaired, and six days later, she hit another deer on a country road. This was all inside of maybe 18 months.

It’s been a few years now, and she’s only hit one deer since, about $9k damage to her Volvo. Of all these accidents, only the rollover and maybe the most recent deer were her fault, the two previous deer were unfortunately unavoidable situations, and the plow truck driver was just asleep at the wheel.

I do 93 miles round trip almost every day- 16 escape, 2 L turbo,4wd, rated at 29mpg hwy- in the warm months. I sometimes get that, generally more like 27. 22 or so when real cold out. 15 gal tank. I think the station has set up a dedicated pump just for me. As I said before used car pricing here is crazy high and the pirus is at the top ( market pricing = price fixing). roughly $3300 in fuel a year on that unit + apx another $1000 in diesel for the truck/year. I was driving one of the trucks daily that was $550/mo in fuel for the same round trip hence the Escape.

I have a Ford Fiesta, I bought it as a new leftover for 13K and run it back and forth to Mass from Northern NH every couple of weeks. Usually trips are 400 mile. I get 40 MPG in the summer and 39 in the winter keeping up with traffic (starts out around around 73 MPH getting up to around 77 (so I dont get run over in Mass and southern NH). NH has yearly excise taxes based on the cars value and of course insurance is also related to the cars value. I get the federal mileage rate for the trips and definitely make money on them. When I wear it out its wont owe me anything.

My generator has used 20 gallons in the last two days, and hasn’t moved 10 feet. That’s poor mileage.

Ashful said:

My generator has used 20 gallons in the last two days, and hasn’t moved 10 feet. That’s poor mileage.

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Depends on your frame of reference.

begreen said:

Yes, that's high consumption. I hope it hasn't moved a millimeter!

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Despite what many believe, plate tectonics are still active on the east cost. It may have moved.
I'm told by a geologist friend that the rate of Appalachian uplift is roughly equivalent to erosion losses so peak heights don't change much.

begreen said:

Yes, that's high consumption. I hope it hasn't moved a millimeter!

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It moves about 6 feet, twice a day. Out of the garage in the morning, back into the garage at night.

Power just came back on. Time to watch "Darkest Hour".

Ashful said:

I don’t know how to tell you this, so I’ll just come out and say it, I think we may have married the same woman.

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You must be mistaken, mine is still daily driving a 2006 VW. I couldn't afford depreciation losses or deductibles on all those vehicles you've been through...

begreen said:

I didn't say that. The 15k miles the Allagash350 reported in 5 months is a lot of mileage.

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I stand corrected Thanks for clearing that up. 15k in 5 months IS a lot of mileage. Not sure how he stands still long enough for an oil change driving that much!

peakbagger said:

I get the federal mileage rate for the trips and definitely make money on them. When I wear it out its wont owe me anything.

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Sounds like my 2004 VW. I used to love business trips to Orlando. They were ~550 miles, and it cost me less than $40 in fuel, plus per-diem. The 2004 cost me $5500 in 2011, and saved me $400 in fuel cost alone last year.

https://fueleconomy.gov/

I ordered a jack off Ebay, and assuming the lug pattern is the same, I have both an extra full size wheel and a doughnut spare. But I too haven't had a flat in so many years that I can't remember the last time. My wife nailed a large pothole last year and flatted. Probably better to carry the jack and spare than be sorry. But then also there's the question of whether the lug nuts are on so tight that the short leverage of a lug nut wrench won't allow a person to get the flat tire wheel off. My tire shop says they tighten the lugs to spec, but I've had to use an impact wrench on occasion to get the lug nuts off for rotating tires. And also sometimes the wheel is corrosion welded to the hub, and great difficulty getting the wheel off, and I have used anti-seize paste on the wheel/hub contact points to prevent that problem.

Good move with the antisieze on hub and lugs. Dealers should usually only tighten to 90’ish lb ft, and their mechanics are SUPPOSED to use torque sticks or torque limiting sockets on their impact tools to stay close to these numbers. Some stubborn mechanics refuse to use them, but hopefully most of those guys have developed enough of a feel for it thru repetition, that they’re probably landing in that 80 - 100 lb ft window for most passenger cars.

The bigger issue is factory installed wheels on a brand new car. They can be a real bugger to break loose, the first time. I don’t know if the manufacturer puts thread locker those nuts, or what, but they can be work to get loose even with an impact tool. Do this, before you end up on the side of the road with a flat.

I’ve never come across a lug I couldn’t break loose with some combination of swearing and jumping or stomping on the wrench. But most of that work was in construction boots in my 20’s, not the loafers I wear to work today. YMMV

I got a breaker bar for the home rotation. I'll let you know if I have a problem.

I thought anti-seize was not recommended for lugs....??

woodgeek said:

I got a breaker bar for the home rotation. I'll let you know if I have a problem.

I thought anti-seize was not recommended for lugs....??

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I’ve done a once-initial application of anti-seize on the lugs of every tractor, car, and trailer I’ve owned for almost 30 years, and have never had one come loose. This started on a mechanic’s advice, back before Al Gore invented the Internet, giving me the ability to research such things on my own.

However, my own experience with maybe 200 total wheels (1000 lug nuts?) is pretty small, compared to the data available out there today. So, your question got me over to Google, where... wait for it... I found no real conclusion. There’s so much forum debate on this subject, that if there is some credible study on it, I didn’t see it in my five or ten minutes of clicking around.

I did find countless folks, older than me, claiming they’ve been doing it 40 years without a single issue. I’m likely to continue doing it myself, unless I see very credible advice to the contrary. I’ve never had a lug nut loosen, after the application of anti-seize.

Ashful said:

Dealers should usually only tighten to 90’ish lb ft, and their mechanics are SUPPOSED to use torque sticks or torque limiting sockets on their impact tools to stay close to these numbers. Some stubborn mechanics refuse to use them, but hopefully most of those guys have developed enough of a feel for it thru repetition, that they’re probably landing in that 80 - 100 lb ft window for most passenger cars.

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One of my pet peeves is over-torqued wheel nuts/bolts. Not only are they hard to remove for tire changing but can also result in warped brake rotors. I believe that improper use of torque sticks can also result in overtightening.
I loosen and retorque mine after shop service using a torque wrench.
I also apply oil or anti-seize to wheel studs/nuts (though not a lot) and have never had any related problems.

Last year I tried to rotate tires on my Corolla. Front wheels came of with difficulty. Rear wheel would no come of no matter what. Found this guy on YouTube, thank God. Since then, anti size.

semipro said:

One of my pet peeves is over-torqued wheel nuts/bolts. Not only are they hard to remove for tire changing but can also result in warped brake rotors. I believe that improper use of torque sticks can also result in overtightening.
I loosen and retorque mine after shop service using a torque wrench.
I also apply oil or anti-seize to wheel studs/nuts (though not a lot) and have never had any related problems.

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Now here’s a mind-bender. Lubing threads will cause the bolt (or lug nut) to reach a much higher tensile force value at the same torque value, due to the reduced thread friction. For engine assembly, they often publish two torque values, “dry thread” and “lubed thread”. This means that, when you torque a lug nut to 90 lb ft with anti-seize, it is actually much tighter (maybe double) that of the same bolt on dry threads.

I’ve never had an issue with warped brake rotors. Would’ve that require uneven torquing? It seems to me an equally torqued wheel, even if over spec, would not be especially susceptible to this.

Unevenly torqued lugs are in higher danger of coming loose, namely the ones torqued to lower values.

WiscWoody said:

I’d like to buy a used Prius someday. My daily driver is a lowly 2000 Toyota Echo That I’ve had since it was a year old. It’s been hit twice now and I hit a deer with it and it has 266,000 on the clock so it’s the butt of many jokes here in the tiny town I live in but it keeps on going and I keep on driving it. Lol, I’ve done 51 full synthetic oil changes on it now. I have two Ford trucks also but the Echo is my go to vehicle most of the time.

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Have you ever put high milleage oil addictive into your synthetic oil? I was recommended that by my mechanic for my 2003 corolla with 220k km.

Mobil 1 synth does have a high mileage version, although I’ve never looked into what makes or different.

T

jetsam said:

I have a gas-only Honda Fit that gets pretty much those same numbers (though the other way around, low 40s on the highway and mid 30s in the city). I always wonder if some of those hybrids are purposely designed for poor mileage so they don't compete with the gas guzzlers too much.

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I don’t think so, but I guess it is possible. My dad had a 4cyl Camry and averaged around 28-30 I would say. The v6 gets in the low 20s.
10 more mpg for similar pricing you would think there would be more on the road.

The other factor with hybrids is not just your mpg but also the emissions.

I just bought it for the mpg, size, and longevity.
I am in sales and will most likely be averaging closer to 50k a year (miles not money) once I really get going (I started in September, and which is why I traded my truck for the Camry). That is what the other two reps average. One has a Lexus rx350 suv that averages 15-20 mpg, and the other has a brand new Denali 2500hd diesel. He is probably getting 14-18 tops.
I’ll keep my mileage check and 40mpg over driving a flashy car

coutufr said:

Have you ever put high milleage oil addictive into your synthetic oil? I was recommended that by my mechanic for my 2003 corolla with 220k km.

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No, I usually use Mobil 1 or Pennzoil Ultimate synthetic oil, no additives. The engine uses very little oil as of yet about 1/2 quart between changes now.