1.8L starting rattle, knock, events

2011 Prius Two 17,800 miles. 3 year lease. Experienced the knocking symptoms during the past week; second time today. Have noticed what felt like a heavy, laborious feel to the drive; today's start prompted call to the dealer who said to see what happened over weekend. After ending call, I say engine light on, which stayed on; called back, they said to bring car over. It was said to be a "known" problem, not all vehicles affected, mine appears to be; he mentioned a valve and that a part was ordered and should be arrive in a day or two. Are there other things I should be ask about or be alert for? Drove Sienna 12 years, this is first hybrid.

 

2011 Prius Two 17,800 miles. 3 year lease. Experienced the knocking symptoms during the past week; second time today. Have noticed what felt like a heavy, laborious feel to the drive; today's start prompted call to the dealer who said to see what happened over weekend. After ending call, I say engine light on, which stayed on; called back, they said to bring car over. It was said to be a "known" problem, not all vehicles affected, mine appears to be; he mentioned a valve and that a part was ordered and should be arrive in a day or two. Are there other things I should be ask about or be alert for? Drove Sienna 12 years, this is first hybrid.

 

It's happened to me about 10 times now over the past 18 months. Early 2010 Gen3 iTech, 47000 miles. Really spooked my wife when it happened to her.

Local dealer - Peter Davey Toyota - never heard of any problems, were bemused by the TSBs I showed them, and basically said it was self-inflicted by using discount gasoline (although no ethanol content). Same thing happened with a tank of Shell V-Power, so go figure.

I also had the leave overnight, couldn't reproduce issue with them. Now that I'm off the $130 capped service charge, I'm seriously thinking about going elsewhere if there is someone trustworthy who maintains Priuses in Melbourne.

 

I have to change my original vote of "never happened" to Happened Once. Miles are 29,000 and winter weather approx. 54F. Cold start. Lasted maybe 2 seconds.

 

Apparently I didn't vote or comment originally. Before being traded in, my 2010 ended up doing this twice in 3 years and 37k miles. Winter and spring. One was many hours after a cold parking lot move, the other not remembered. TSB not applied.

Nothing on the 2012 yet.

 

Tried the "accelerator when knocking starts" treatment and it stopped as soon as the revs got around 1500-1800 or so (by ear) but reappeared when I took my foot off a few seconds later and the engine slowed down. Obviously you do this in neutral and not drive...

 

Parts are ordered to have the TSB done on mine.

 

I have a 2010 Type II, and have had this problem (Startup misfiring) since 11/2012 (Approx). Until seeing the TSB I didn't give it a 2nd thought, as it always disappeared after about 10 sec.
Brought the car in for 60K service with 60,900 miles and mentioned the problem to the service advisor. He said the check engine light needed to be on for TSB 10-12 to apply, and if I wanted it fixed he mentioned $800 since it had MORE THAN 60K on the odo. The whole thing didn't quite sit right with me, and I asked to speak to the service manager. He read my copy of the TSB and said the tech had misread the requirements, and that he had the authority to extend this warranty coverage for slight amounts of mileage. Long story short, I had the repair done at no cost. Just be mindful of the 60K time limit if you have the same problem.

 

European driver here. III gen 2009 model, 75,000 miles / 120,000 km. Had the problem first time two weeks ago. Terrible sound for 10-20 sec when starting the car. It was an autumn morning, temperature was 34F (1C), expectionally high humidity. The car was shortly moved on the previous day, making the engine run only for couple of secs = interrupted warm up cycle.

This wasn't just a minor rattle, it was clear from the sound that engine was having serious starting problems. I'm not an engine expert but I could imagine that if you drained out all oil, remove couple of sparking plugs, add some water to fuel, the sound would be just like that. Luckily I had dashcam installed, got the incident on the video:

The video quality is not good (cheap cam) but pay attention that in the very end of video the engine finally runs smoothly, although you almost cannot hear anything, as the bad sound was so loud compared to normal sound.

I have never before had starting problems (owned the car for 7 months), even in winter time when -4F/-20C temperatures are not uncommon (then again, the winter air is very dry here). I'm pretty sure the main causes are humidity & interrupted warm up cycle. A contributing factor in my case may be the extra ethanol in the tank (E38, vs. regular E10), as ethanol is known to absorb water.

I already made a separate thread of my issue before I found this thread, see A loud, metallic start up sound from engine | PriusChat