Prius battery?

That page said something to the effect that did all 4 strokes in a single revolution, so it reminded me of the Mazda rotaries, which of course were not such fuel savers if I recall.

I remember looking at a customer's truck for rust on the skirts behind the rear wheels. It was a slushy day and there was a buildup of ice behind the wheels so I knocked the ice off with my boot. Unfortunately, the ice had encased the wires for the rear marker light and kicking the ice pulled the wires right out of the light assembly. It's worse when the customer is standing right there, but new fender skirts and a new market light assembly made him happy.

As a percentage of articles posted, qslim probably ranks right there at the top, and his technical advice is always right on. I vote to cut him a little slack! ;-)

I was incorrect, however. It is an Atkinson cycle engine, as pointed out by another member of the group.

Besides small engines (like lawn mower engines), the only other 2 stroke engines (piston engines that complete all four strokes in one cycle) that I am aware of are diesel engines in heavy equipment, like trucks, boats, and big generators.

When I was in college and high school, I took a few apart for my father, who had a machine shop.

There are other ways - - check out Ebay - - if you don't mind the stigma of the car being termed "Salvage", buying a repaired car can save you about $5000. I bought one two years ago for $17,000. Of course there's no warranty repair on one - - you have to pay in full for anything that needs work. So far the only things that I've had to pay for is a dealership inspection for $100, a new 12V storage battery for $165, a spare key fob for $297, and a ground connection that went bad for $366. It's always a risk, but sometimes you can tell by how thoroughly the car is covered by photographs in the Ebay ad, and the story that goes along with it. I had to drive about 100 miles to Sacramento to get my car while I live near San Jose, Ca. There's always the history of the seller to gauge the risks and the "completed listings" to see what people are actually paying.

Good luck

Chuck

That's pretty damn funny, Ray. Having worked for a Toyota dealer for close to ten years, I have my share of weird failures and bizarre one in a million incidents fit for a sitcom. But, whenever I hang out with some pals from the Dodge or Ford dealerships from across the way, this handful of stories for me is just day to day life for them. I remember hanging out with a career Ford tech once, and he was talking about commonality and frequency of failures. He pointed out that on the cars I work on, if you see one failure on a certain Toyota model, you can expect to see it on a good percentage of the rest of that model, which is true. On some other cars (i.e. Ford), it's a complete crapshoot as to what has failed on a broken car.

"Chuck Olson" ...

That last line is something I'd think you'd need quite a bit of, with "e-Pray." I'd really be hesitant to try to buy any big-ticket thing from an eBay seller. Have any others here had good luck with online auto buying? With eBay or any other?

Just curious.

Natalie

"qslim"...

Even the Fusion? Or is it too early to tell?

Natalie

A lot of dealers in small towns sold other makes, and I'd occasionally run into the Ford, Pontiac, and Volvo reps. Those reps would give me the evil eye because they were busy meeting with customers while I usually had time to walk around the shop and shoot the breeze with the techs or check out the Snap-On guy's truck if he happened to be visiting. I always listened to the techs when they told me about a new problem they ran across, because chances were, I'd see it at another store.

I've replaced a few dozen batteries over the years since the first gen came out, and have yet to see a customer pay any money towards replacement, even with over 100k. Toyota seems to be standing behind these things. Whether or not this will continue as hybrids get more mainstream remains to be seen.