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Collision Repair

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Small rant.

I have a 2007 Prius. Back in July of 2013, I got rear ended. Or rather, my wife, unborn son, and I got rear ended. Anyway, the Auto body shop that is run by the dealer I bought the car from did the work, and after the aftermarket bumper didn’t fit, they put a real Toyota bumper on the car. Anyway, fast forward 5 months, and something starts to smell in the car. I search, and pull everything out I can think of. Smell goes away for a day or two, then comes back. So, I pull more out. Finally, I open the “hidden compartment” in the trunk, and wham, the smell hits me. I remove everything in there… smell is still there. Fine, I remove the compartment itself, and find a good 1/4-1/2″ of smelly yellowish liquid. I think it’s uncured epoxy resin or something, and head back to the body shop. They mop it up, and say “let us know”. Okay, so I take it back to a car wash, and run through. Viola, more liquid, though this time it obviously is car wash soapy water.

I make an appointment, and take the car back. They give me a free rental for the day, and stick the car in their shower… they find there was a missing piece of body panel sealant below the right tail light. They patched it up real quick, and stuck the car back in the shower, with no leaks.

So, the rant is… why the heck didn’t they stick it in the shower after the initial repair?! Gar… I really hate shoddy workmanship. Would have taken a few minutes, and saved me hours of looking for a smell in my car… plus, saved them the rental car, and time. It’s like insurance insisting on the aftermarket bumper that didn’t fit right… they had to buy both (aftermarket and OEM) because they tried to cheap out to start with. Gar!

Prius 2007, 4 years later

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4 years ago today, we got our first new car. We had put our name on the waiting list about 3 months earlier (early september). It was not a foolproof process, but we got the car we wanted, and have had very few problems with the car since.

We got the car with 3 miles on the odometer, and since then, we’ve driven an additional 57,493.4 miles (as of the time of writing). That amounts to 14,373 miles per year (which isn’t too far off the “normal” 12k miles per year most manufacturers claim. With those miles, we’ve put 155 tanks of gas in the car (1277.12 gallons), or $3804.33 worth of gas (which is an average of $2.98/gal). The lifetime average mileage, based only on those numbers is 45.02MPG. The actual current calculated MPG based upon the MPG of each tank, is 45.21MPG, so, pretty close.

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Toyota Prius 2007 HID Bulb replacement

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UPDATE: Shortly after the below, I undid the replacement. The 3rd party bulbs were much whiter, and seemed to aim higher as I got several “flashers” from oncoming traffic thinking I was using high beams. Dealing with the bulb outages may be dangerous to me, but blinding oncoming traffic is dangerous to others. So, YMMV.

Forgive me, the first part of this post covers some back story. If you just want to see the process, feel free to skip ahead to paragraph 4. Thanks! Please pay special attention to the bolded text, as it’s the main tips I have to offer that weren’t directly covered in other documentation I found.

I own a 2007 Prius Touring Edition, that came with HID headlights. Which, is nice, since they provide a lot of visibility at night. But, around the time I had the car serviced for a CHS (Coolant Heat Storage) water pump service bulletin (TSB-0087-08) my driver’s side light began flickering. Then, it just went out one time. But, upon turning the lights off, then back on, it came back, and didn’t go out again for about a year (odd). Then, it started to do it in ernest, and it’s “friend” joined in (the passenger side started to go out). But, all along, turning off the headlights, then back on, they would both come back on. So, I was a slacker, and waited to call Toyota about it (one time it did it, I stopped by a dealer, and they quoted me $450/bulb!).

Finally, about 3 months ago, it started getting bad. On a given nighttime drive, one or both of the lights would go out at least once (they never went out together at the same time). So, I brought the car into the dealer, and they quoted me $150/bulb, plus $100 in labor. Better, but still $400! So, I called up Toyota Customer Care, and spoke to them. First person said there was nothing they could do, so I asked to be escalated. They took my name and number, and said they’d call back. Which, they did in a couple hours. After some discussion, and another call back, they said they would cover the cost of one of the bulbs (they couldn’t get both to go out at the dealer), but not the labor… so, $100 to do one bulb. I said I could do both myself for $60 ($50 for a pair of bulbs online, and about $10 shipping). They were flabbergasted that it was that cheap. I said “Thanks, but no thanks” and left it at that (with a few choice words about how horrible it was that Toyota was not addressing this issue).

So, I went online, and as per numerous reviews, I ordered some D4R 4300k (4300k is the stock color temperature for the Prius, although I find these 4300k bulbs to be “whiter” than the OEM ones were) bulbs at High Performance Bulbs for $49.99 and less than $10 shipping, and had them here in 5 days (from NJ to OR!). I first tried the “lazy” method (please note, changing the Driver’s side this way is not too difficult. However, the passenger side is extremely tight, and unless you’re rail thin, you will not be able to replace that bulb) of not removing the bumper… it proved fruitless as it’s difficult to know which way to turn the bulb enclosure back, and the space is quite limited. So, I put the new bulbs on the bench and said I’d come back to it in a couple weeks.

So, this last week, while driving for no more than 20 minutes at night, the drivers side bulb went out 5 times. So, I decided to go ahead and do it this weekend. So, yesterday, I did.

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