2006 Prius died on the freeway???

This definitely stinks, but it may be impossible to prove what the smell is.

It is very unlikely for one of those pipes to come out, anything is possible, but again unlikely. If this were to happen the rest of their statement would be the likely result. According to the drawing below, assuming this is the pipe, it is pressed into the head (and supposed to stay there) and is considered part of the head. This may suggest a defective cylinder head which has a 6 yr/ 60K mile warranty. I don't recall you stating the mileage you are at now.

I'm sure there were at least a couple million of these pipes installed in heads and would say that one coming out could be possible, as could someone pulling it out or someone making up a story when it never came out. Keep in mind I have not seen the actual part, if I were to see it I may have a different opinion.

At this point it has has been to three different places which would make anything hard to prove. I wouldn't be surprised if they all pointed fingers at each other.

There are two ways to look at how you might make a claim. Did Toyota make a defective head, or did Hooman miss something during their inspection? If you are passed the time or mileage of the warranty you could try to see if Toyota corporate will still help you out or try to see if Hooman will put some weight behind their inspection and repair it considering the failure shortly after. Keep in mind the inspection cannot predict the future and is meant to find current problems.

On the pricing, I would have charged around $260 for the exact same battery out the door. On the engine, I could beat that price for sure. In my opinion replacement would be better than repairing your current engine.

Please keep us posted, if you have any questions I'd be happy to help.

Avi

 

Here are some real life pics. Not pictures of the OP's vehicle.

 

So the people that fixed your car, two days before your trip, left a hose loose, they have liability insurance, I'd contact a laywer.

 

They are saying a pipe came off, not the hose. The pictures are not of the vehicle the thread is about.

 

From the opening post it appears that they only worked on the inverter coolant loop, but the subsequent problem was apparently in the engine coolant loop. So it may not be quite so easy to pin the blame on the service dept.

 

They also performed some sort of inspection. I would imagine it was one of those inspections that lists a bunch of items Prii don't even have. Apparently they inspected the hoses and hose clamps. I don't know about you, but I can't remember ever seeing one of those pipes come out on it's own.

 

I totally agree with you Avi, this thing is suspicious. But I still think that their response is going to be: "we didn't work on the engine coolant loop - not our problem". Followed by: "some failures can't be predicted by our inspection - sorry".

 

Maybe parking this car near the service entrance with "this car died right after passing a world class inspection" written on it would help. By the way I pulled on the small hose attached to the pipe in the picture and the pipe didn't budge. I wonder if the head getting extremely hot would loosen the hold enough for the pipe to slip out. Especially if there was a lot of pressure in that pipe. This might suggest the pipe coming out would not be the cause but rather an effect of something else. I wonder what would happen if someone accidentally drained the engine coolant while replacing the inverter pump and didn't re-fill it?

 

Yes, that's definitely what I've been thinking Avi's. The combination of heat and pressure after it had already overheated due to some other unknown "root" cause.

Perhaps their "world class" first year apprentice accidentally drained the engine coolant when he was replacing the inverter coolant pump?

 

More like a "worthless" inspection.

I'd love to see a copy of the report.

 

Yeesh...I'm glad I didn't buy my Prius form Hooman...=/