Bladder Tank Frustration

the gas bladder: exposed! | PriusChat a good read...

what a backasswards way to make a fuel tank... Engineers/designers/architects rarely ever work on the crap they design...They should be mandated to work at least 2 years as a maintenance worker/mechanic in their chosen design field.

 

Cool, Guys, thanks for the help. Missed the PDF link on the first time through, read the GreenHybrid thread but didn't learn anything. Yeah, the PDF about covers it... And the pictures explain a lot more.

But I wish everyone would stop calling it a bladder. I think that's the cause of half the confusion around this. It's not actually a bladder, it's really a semi-rigid plastic tank liner with a poorly bellowed top. No wonder it doesn't want to fill up when it's cold. If it was truly a bladder, it wouldn't have this problem. I suspect it would fill more reliably if you never run it down below maybe 30% - kinda like the HV Battery. I can just imagine how crumpled and sucked down the top of that liner must get when it's almost empty.

And there was me thinking that the system was, for some fancy technical reason, inflating the bladder or pressurizing the tank to prevent it filling completely - maybe as a way to prevent fuel thermal expansion issues. Really, it's just a cheap tank liner. In a super complex fuel storage and vapour control system.

For sure, from now, I'm not going to run my tank right down, and I'm going to follow the other filling recommendations listed here!

Cheers,
Al

 

Since you are in New Zealand, the discussion about the fuel tank bladder (or whatever you choose to call it) is not applicable to your car since it is JDM. Your car has a regular fuel tank.

 

Hi again Patrick,

Awesome! I did wonder about that. Many thanks for the great info.

That means the 9.25 litres I put in to refill after just 321km (yeah, I was a bit impatient to see how the economy was), is probably the true figure.

But I guess that means most of the discussion about the fuel tank, sender, inclinometers, vapour recovery system, etc doesn't apply to me. Do you know where I can find the relevant data?

FWIW, I calculate 25km/l / 4.0l/100km or 70MPG (Imperial gallon). The US gallon is 3.6 litres?

A lot of that was with A/C on, as it's summer down here. Still, I'm very impressed.

Oh, another related question. The MFD cumulative "milage" calculator (On the Bar Graph screen) also records the distance since last fill. That didn't reset when I topped up (which is fine), but what are the parameters for how / when it resets?

 

The US gallon is 3.79 liters.

You should drive a longer distance before refueling and keep track of cumulative miles driven vs. cumulative fuel consumption to develop a more reliable estimate of fuel economy. Don't expect to continue seeing 70 miles/Imperial gallon unless all of your driving is downhill...

On newer 2G Prius such as you own, the MFD fuel economy reading will not reset until you press the reset button. On older 2G Prius it will reset automatically upon refueling.

techinfo.toyota.com is the Toyota subscription website to obtain repair manual info on North American models.
toyota-tech.eu is the Europe website.

The correct website for your JDM model would probably be a Japanese-language website.

 

I just want to say that I have a gen2 (with a fuel bladder) and I have never been attacked by winged monkeys. I don't know that the same can be said of all gen3 owners.