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I arranged with my local Toyota dealer, Chester/Deeside area, to have 2 new tyres fitted today. All 4 tyres were hanging around 3 mm but I decided to have 2 new on the front. I have a Gen 4 Prius Excel with 15" wheels. Originals were Toyo and the dealer quoted me about 2 months ago £50 per tyre, that included balancing, new valves, disposal etc and included VAT. That matched any price I could see on the internet so booked in for today. When done I started chatting to the service guy about satnav map updates, and he offered to update today if I had time to wait for about an hour - it takes that time for the software to do its job. Job done, just had to hand over the £100 for 2 tyres. If there is another map update before my car is 3 years old end of September then they will do that freebie as well. I know some on this forum are not too impressed with their local Toyota dealer, so I thought I would give a good comment about my local dealer.

Its rather like when you've just washed the car, it starts to rain---when motorcycling , the only time it rains is when you went out without your waterproofs and when you fit winter tyres, the weather stays mild.

The universal answer to everything, good or bad! 🙂

In days gone by, I'd have put new tyres on the rear, but that was when I drove more enthusiastically and ran a greater risk of the car losing stability on a wet corner. These days I'd put them on the front. I'd rather have better traction pulling out on a wet roundabout and better aquaplaning resistance on the steering wheels. If the rears are really bad enough to cause a loss of stability under braking - even when we have ABS and stability control to keep the car in line - then I'd say those tyres need changing as well!

The blue light is a bit pointless in the way that it operates. I suppose it's done that way because the lights don't actually 'dip' at all, but it would be more reassuring if it changed when the shuttering activated. After adjusting the beams up, I don't use AHB at all any more. In fact, I rarely bother with manual main beam other than for the occasional joy of lighting up something that's half a mile away.

So upgrade it. Easily upgraded or add an extra. Flat blade under the opposite end to the switch, W5W / T10 LED of the cob type is much brighter. If you remove the grey plastic cover on the back you can fit a longer bulb in. Or stick an LED strip under the black plastic above the light and feed the wire into the original light.

The interior boot light is puny!

I thought about saying that to you yesterday - depreciation on the new car would probably be higher than what you saved in petrol.

If you want to save money, just keep the Auris. With such low mileages, I can't see how it could ever make financial sense to change the car.

Even though the top mark in the handbook is marked as excessive?? and the vehicle is not factory filled to the top mark?? if the oil was 1/2 way down the dipstick would you panic and think the engine will seize up because the dipstick seemingly shows there is not enough oil in the car? it's not as though the dipstick goes to the bottom of the sump is it but merely extends around 30mm into the oil bath. I've been Googling this and there are large numbers of 'fill er right up' and saying overfilling will not cause any problems etc but there are a few from techies who clearly know what they are talking about. It's made clear that that the two marks on dipsticks are extreme markers, do not go under the lower and do not go above the upper. I have to ask. you have a Gen4 Prius same as me, are you saying that it uses oil so you have to top it up after a journey? I didn't notice any drop on the level of mine even after it's first 5000 miles as it went for it's first service so I'm guessing yours maybe is business use and you do a very high mileage?