300,000 on the clock...replace engine or junk the car?

Howdy!

I inherited a coworker's '05 Prius as my company car late last year. It had 264,000 miles on it that were all highway driving. It has been a great little car for what I need...43 mpg and plenty of "zip" going down the road. About 2 months ago, it started using oil. It has now worked its way up to using a quart every 900 miles or so. I drive 250 highway miles per day on average, so it goes through it quickly.

Had my local hybrid-certified shop look it over today. No leaks anywhere, but the plugs are discolored and there is pretty significant soot build-up in the muffler. Looks like it's losing its rings and burning oil...bummer.

The Prius has 297,000 miles on the clock right now. My mechanic can get an engine with 47,000 miles on it...price tag is $3500 installed. Everything on the car is in good shape...body is awesome, interior decent, brakes & tires are good, exhaust is solid, steering components are tight, HID headlights were replaced in December...the only thing I know it will need in the next year is rear shocks.

Is it worth taking the gamble and fixing it, or are there several other major failures coming just around the bend (i.e. tranny, batteries, etc)? Neither my mechanic or the local Toyota dealer have ever seen a Prius with that many miles on the clock, so they couldn't recommend one way or the other.

On a side note...what additive (Lucas, etc) would work best to nurse it along until my employer decides what to do? I don't want to put in anything too heavy, but even a slight slow-down on the burning would be better than nothing at this point.

Thanks!

That's ridiculously expensive , about 2.5 hrs work to swap a complete engine , and there is no demand for engines so they should be cheap. Price an engine yourself and get another price, any mechanic can do this doesn't have to be hybrid specialist.

My girlfriend's 2006 Rav4 eats oil like that. You could try a heavier weight oil for now.

From what I have been told, the expense isn't in the engine or the swap itself. It's the hours of labor for powering the system up & down to work around the hybrid without getting your hiny fried that cranks up the $$$$. This is why I'll still take working on my old carb'd truck any day...

Thanks, I already went to 10W-30 which helped short term. I don't think that I can go heavier than that without pushing the tolerances on the engine. Maybe someone out there knows better than I do...I'm used to old V8's.

Has the hybrid battery been replaced? If not then I would say no.


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I drive occasionally a Toyota Carina E, and at 150k was consuming oil as you describe. Now with 263k miles, it keeps the same oil consumption, and on the same catalytic converter. Keep it running.

There was a thread on here of a guy in the USA who swapped an engine out in his drive way complete with pics. Once the fuse was out of the electric and battery isolated, he just lifted the hybrid electric box to the right of the engine off and hey presto underneath there is just a standard looking fwd gearbox bolted to the engine , simple swap then. Or get a quote from autobeyours.com

You could try Mobil 1 oil that is designed for old engines that use oil! They have a special name for the oil! H

Try swapping out the PCV valve/checking the passage. It's like $3 and ten minutes of cussing. If it gets messed up it can make an engine with marginal oil consumption hoover it down. You still have 10W-40 and 20W-50 to go to.

I'd be inclined to swap the engine. Shop around for a better price.

I would DIY the engine swap. I would buy the engine from Steve at Autobeyours. If I was not comfortable swapping the engine myself, I would drive to Autobeyours and have him do it for me. I'll bet he can beat $3500 and he is an expert. Swapping an engine is child's play to him. Give him a call and see what he says.

Your purchase of a quart of oil every 900 miles is much cheaper than a one-time expenditure of $3,500, so I would do the former for a while to see whether the oil consumption gets worse. As you mentioned, the traction battery, inverter and/or transaxle could die at any moment.

On the other hand, if your company wants to spend its money on funding the repairs, then go for it.

Definitely a good first move.

Hi-
Not sure what you mean. Its very quick & easy to disable the Hybrid battery. Just unplug the big orange Hybrid Safety Interlock connector in the trunk. That takes all of 5 minutes. Then Hybrid battery is physically disconnected from the car and you an do anything you want to the car with no fear. Just a regular old combustion engine car then.

The hassle with replacing the engine is it has to come out of the bottom so very difficult at home. But actually easier on a lift at a garage.

To the OP like other posters I would get a case of cheap heavier oil and keep filling it up. Because your way past the life of the Hybrid battery also. It would really be disappointing to replace the engine and then the Hybrid or CVT fails. Drive it into the ground. Please go to lusciousgarage.com as they discuss alot of high mileage issues with Prius taxi's and you can get a good feel out of the remaining life of your car.

I'm a little confused.
This is a company car? (like mine)
If it were me I'd let the boss flip the coin unless the company is very small (like: you're a co-owner) and depending on what they/you would be replacing the Prius with.

If it were my personal mount, I'd do the swap, but I'd shop the price around a little bit after checking the pcv, and determining for sure that the motor is burning rather than leaking the oil. As far as oil is concerned....you can probably club up to a higher viscosity. They ran 20w50 in my (and my boss') company cars for about 150/1000 miles respectively before I screamed at them about voiding the warranty. Mileage never really waivered that much. After 30K mine still runs like a sewing machine...and I'm NOT convinced that they're putting synthetic in the car now...in fact....I'd bet against it.
Try all of the exotic additives. Increase the viscosity. At this point what's it going to do? Wreck the motor?
Worst case: you swap out the motor at the inflated price and get another year or two out of it. You're still getting 45mpg. Do the math.
One of the more expensive of the remaining components (traction battery) can also be bought used and replaced much more easily than the motor. IIRC, you can get that done for another 2K, and this is if and after the battery fails totally.
See if the company will sell you the car if they decide to junk it.
I'm thinking that it has to be worth $3K---and I'm thinking that you can swap the motor much more cheaply than that.
Good Luck.

Let us know how it shakes out.

IME it's easier to pull an engine out from the bottom and lift/roll the front of the car back over the engine than it is to push/pull the engine around trying to pull it up through the top, but then again I'm comparing an old watercooled VW at 2k lbs to a Prius at 3k lbs, so that could color things.

I just checked car-part.com and I see complete engines from salvage cars with around 50k miles for $1100.00. Find one that is on your way to one of the Prius specialists in the country. Pick up the used engine on the way and take the Prius and the engine to them to install. Heck, at that price, get the used hybrid battery out of the car too. They might cut you a deal if you buy both.

I can't imagine anyone would charge almost $2500 in labor to install a used engine. The engine is so light it shouldn't be hard to maneuver it out of the engine bay with one or two people.

Sounds like a fun weekend project to me.

-VR