Heater not working

A few, but not many, of the gen 3 head gasket failures were caused by water pump failures and not EGR. Do you think that might be a factor here?

 

Chalk up another one. My 2016 Prius Four Touring with 106k miles is at the dealer service dept now, they tell me it's a blown head gasket. I brought it in due to the temperature light coming on during freeway driving, they saw that the coolant was low and scoped the combustion chambers, and found evidence of coolant in the cylinders (carbon washed off the piston heads, especially in the #1 cylinder).

The dealership wants to replace the engine and quoted me a totally ridiculous number ($8k). I'll be taking it to an independent shop that specializes in Toyotas for a second opinion. Despite the dealership's claim of coolant in the cylinders, I've had no knocking or shaking on startup and no white smoke or excessive steam out the tailpipe, so I am assuming the leak is not huge yet-- if it is in fact the HG. Hopefully the other shop can replace the HG and machine the head for under $2500, but we shall see.

 

New engine, or salvage?

 

Salvaged engine with 47k miles on it. After calling around, most non-dealer shops refuse to work on hybrids (no surprise), but the couple that will do it want $4k+ to replace the HG, or $6k+ to replace the engine. I thought I was being safe by getting a Gen4 instead of Gen3... d'oh.

 

UPDATE: turns out mine was not a head gasket failure after all, but rather a coolant leak at the exhaust heat recovery heat exchanger just aft of the lower catalytic converter. so coolant was getting into the exhaust and showing up as white "smoke" (steam) while driving, just not thru the head gasket. glad I got a second opinion before just replacing the motor like the dealership wanted to do! replacing the exhaust heat exchanger will still be expensive (~$2k, 1300 of which is parts), but a lot cheaper than a motor replacement or head gasket repair.

i found a Toyota TSB about this issue: T-SB-0135-19. unfortunately my Prius is outside the warranty period for this one, so no free fix.

the parts are 2 months out, so the shop suggested disconnecting the coolant hoses from the leaking heat exchanger and connecting them together with an elbow, bypassing it the leaking part. that would at least drive it for the next couple of months until the replacement part comes in. the motor won't warm up as quickly (so mileage will suffer a bit) but that should be fine temporarily, right?

 

I thought that might have been the issue. Same happened to me. See my post below. Cost me around 1100 to get it done

TSB: Coolant leakage at front exhaust pipe (Prius & Prius Prime) | PriusChat

 

They are charging too much it would seem. The TSB mentions 1.5 hours of labor. So about what i paid. 228 in labor. Below are the prices of the parts if i ordered my parts on the dealer site instead of having the dealer order them themselves

 

So was the dealer just blowing smoke about what they saw in the combustion chambers? What did the second-opinion folks say about that?

 

They didn't mention it, and unfortunately I forgot to ask. However I've been driving the vehicle with the exhaust heat exchanger bypassed for the last week and haven't been losing any coolant as far as I can tell, so I'm hopeful the dealership guys were just full of shit. Definitely something to keep an eye on though, especially since the engine did overheat a few times before I took it in.

I should probably get a cheap borescope and check the piston heads out myself.

 

Had mine done for free, since I was within the 96 months/80,000 miles.

 

Any update? Did you bring up the cost and inquire why its so much more?