Goodbye Old Friend

The 2007 Prius has left the building.  Yesterday in a FB Marketplace whirlwind, the car, which I gave to Katie a little over two years ago, was sold.  As soon as Cindy listed the car she was deluged by interest, primarily because of the low ask price of $1200.  With 14 years and over 235,000 miles on the odometer it has now left my circle of existence.

The Prius was the car we bought for Cindy to replace her Miata, which she loved but had a boatload of problems.  When Ali and I bought our 2007 Camry Hybrid we had first looked at a Prius.  I recall at that time I dismissed it as being too small for me to fit, however as I found out later, the Prius actually fits me just fine, in more ways than one.

Cindy used the car as her daily driver until we bought her the Ioniq.  At that point she “sold” the Prius to me and I used it as my daily driver, instead of piling miles on my then new 2016 Tacoma.  When I think about what I have been through with the car, both good and bad, the log book is huge.

Besides reliably performing the mundane task of taking us to and from work daily, the Prius was also a part of one the most memorable western road trips I ever had.  Prior to this, all of our road trips were done in conversion vans which offered lots of space with little mpg.  Surprisingly, doing 5000-6000 miles in the Prius was not nearly as bad as we feared. Spending 25% of the amount of money we usually would spend on gas was a huge pro with the 45-50mpg I could normally pull.

The car took us through the winding and beautiful roads of Yellowstone Park.  It was the vehicle we were driving when I had my infamous drone flight in Yellowstone which resulted in almost a $1000 fine several months later. The car delivered us to Craters of the Moon in Idaho, which lived up to it’s name.  At that park I again flew my drone and this time ran out of battery in the middle of a lava field which resulted in another infamous moment as I searched and searched for it, walking on areas that I was not supposed to be.

It took us to the Great Salt Flats in Utah where I did repeated speed runs which left the undercarriage coated in salt crystals.  Cindy and I had to then track down the closest car wash to blast off the corrosive salt as quickly as possible.

On our way to Vegas on one of the wide open roads with 80MPH speed limit I took the Prius to it’s top speed ever of 101 MPH.  I remember being surprised that the speedometer even had a third digit.

The car also made a visit to White Sands (top picture), where we once again took in the beauty of the park which has sand dunes so white that you could easily mistake it as snow, if you didn’t look at a thermometer.

In addition to the road trips the car was involved with it also has been the target of a lot of maintenance/repair work for me.  A few of my Prius repair videos are some of my most viewed on the channel, with my headlight bulb video crossing 125,000 views.  The car was responsible for what was probably my most involved repair ever when I removed the hybrid battery pack, took the pack apart and replaced two bad cells with refurbished ones.

I had never owned a vehicle that had over 200k on the odometer, the closest I got was my 99 Tacoma that was in the 190’s when I sold it.  The Prius smashed that mark by more than 40,000 miles.  The last two years since I gave the car to Katie things started to go downhill for the old girl.  The red triangle of death would come on pretty regularly but I was always able to clear the error.  The repairs I did to the hybrid pack actually did allow the car to keep plugging along.

The struts on the car were shot and the ABS controller is on it’s way to failing as well, which is another very expensive repair if you pay a mechanic to do it. The tires were marginal and because of lack of driving, the 12V battery was also discharged.  This laundry list of issues is why the car was listed so cheaply.

Despite listing some of the issues in the FB ad the demand for it was sky high.  Katie got full asking price.  She got the paper title for it during the day and completed the transaction in the afternoon.  Just like that, the car is gone.  As you can tell by my walk down nostalgia lane here, I definitely have some sadness with the sale of the car but there is also a sense of relief.  Even though I transferred ownership of the car to Katie, I always felt like I was still responsible for maintaining it.  With the increasing number of issues the car had I have some sense of relief that those problems are no longer  my concern.

This weekend I have three medium level projects to tackle.  I am hoping to have minimal hurdles in accomplishing that goal as mentally, I just am not feeling all that motivated right now.  I officially booked my 2nd Moderna shot for next Wednesday.  With the CDC announcing yesterday that if you are fully vaccinated you basically now have a hall pass, I have a feeling more people will be motivated to get the shot.