But while we're messing around in the area of the transaxle, there are a couple of other things worth looking at in the process.

Just about any opportunity to dive underneath the front of the car should be used to check up on the four CV joint boots and the stainless bands holding them at each end, as continued dust-boot integrity is fairly critical to a trouble-free driveline. Any cracks/rips or leakage will lead to rapid joint degradation from dirt and loss of their lifetime load of grease inside.

These three bolts in the long slot get wet a lot, and may be slightly icky to remove. Let's go slowly and try not to shear them off...

Again, watch for falling road-dirt while removing the panels. In most cars there may be an additional piece or two of plastic over this slot; the design of this area changed slightly over different model years. The bits that bridge the valley were lost on mine some time back on a little dirt-road adventure. Good thing it's all just flexible plastic.

I never bothered taking this car in for the reflash, having never had the stalling issue. Either I already have updated ECU code [although it's beyond me how it could, as this is a mid-year '04] or my driving style so rarely puts the system into borderline timing states that the bug has never kicked in.

While the main treatment was reflashing the ECUs, some cars were also to receive another funny little fix, to open up the connections behind M5 and, as the SSC-50P memo puts it,   "...a special dielectric grease will be applied to a connector for the transaxle to prevent water intrusion."  

But to only one out of the three, which seemed really odd.

Now, all the small-signal connectors in question are on the front of the transaxle and they *all* get splashed in wet driving. However, apparently that wasn't the source of the problematic water. M5 points downward out of the transaxle, while the other two point straight forward or up, and a read through the SSC document shows the grease being applied to the *back side* of M5 which is tilted upward as it sits inside the transaxle. Thus, the water in question must fall from the inside down into the pins in the back side of the inner resolver connector.

It's hard to envision how significant water could get inside the transaxle in the first place, let alone fly around and land inside random internal parts which are all soaking in transmission fluid anyway. That has always remained one of the great unanswered Prius questions. Maybe it could come from some runoff path of internal condensation? On the other hand, it *is* right under the cover plate with the one-way air inlet valve. Who knows. Toyota evidently thinks they do, but they're not tellin'.

The external connectors all look nice and clean as do the sockets and pins they fit to, so no problem there despite New England's best efforts to liberally salt them up for me.

The local auto-emporium only had dielectric grease in 5-pound tubs which I certainly don't need, but since I was in there also buying lamps that day they pointed out all the little envelopes of this stuff above the lamps shelf and that I was entitled to grab at least two of them. So a modest wad of this now gets stuffed into the connector and everything reassembled.

Recall how the first-gen Prius [and now the third-gen too, ironically enough] has a genuine "muffler bearing", one of those terms used to confuse garage customers or rookie parts-counter guys? Well, this makes it clear that blinker fluid exists in real life, too.

Hymotion, eat your heart out.

The only new hack added to my procedure this time is looking into the fill-hole with a mirror and flashlight and being able to actually see the level inside after pouring the first three quarts, giving a better guide as to how much more to add but avoid overflowing. Note -- if the car is up on ramps at the front and the level brought right up to the fill-hole edge, the transaxle may wind up slightly *overfilled* once the car is back down to level.