Overheated Prius Motor, Have some questions.

Hello all, recently I had the pleasure of destroying my girlfriends 2010 prius ICE after changing her headlights. I disconnected the coolant overflow hose to get access to passenger side bulb. Well I got a phone call and quickly connected the new bulb closed the hood and drove the car several times over the course of a week. She just drove it about 100 miles to her friends house. no issues. On the way home her check engine light came on and I missed a call from her and didnt call her back till she drove about an hour at highway speed.

She called me a told me her heat wasnt working and the car was acting funny..... I knew immediately there was a major issue. I knew the engine was already toast when she told me its been like that for an hour so I told her to just drive it home. I saw the coolant overflow line disconnected and i coudnt believe i actually just destroyed an engine by making a mistake changing the headlight.....Just had a fresh oil change, the oil was filthy headgasket failed for sure, I highly doubt it can even be rebuilt I bet the cylinders are warped especially how fast it cools down in this winter weather.

Anyways, I think im going to swap in another 2010 prius motor from ebay or a junk yard that can confirm the engine was running. I know the hybrid system is separate from the ICE cooling system but im just wondering if theres anything else I might have screwed up other than the internals of the engine? Is there any programming or sensors that are individually tracked by the ecu? I think it should just be a straight forward swap but you never know with these modern cars.

Any help would be appreciated. Also, the kicker here is I am a professional mechanic. I dont think the block or the crank shaft will even be in condition to be rebuilt and I honestly dont have the time right now for that. I can do a swap in a weekend. This is easily one of the most ridiculous oversight to consequence ratio I have ever experienced.

 

Brother, I went from feeling horrible like I was going to start a new life somewhere else to kind of excited to do a motor swap haha. The 2016 engines are way cheaper and have far less miles(obviously)? What makes them different or better?

 

Probs the exact face I made when I saw the hose. What a nightmare mistake.

This is actually pretty messed up on Toyota. If the car doesn't have these absolutely vital guages available, at least have some sort of message system or extremely effective limp mode that doesn't allow you to drive 75 mph on the highway with zero coolant.... The only dash indicator was a check engine light. Now I may be jaded from driving cars for years with CEL. But I don't think anybody pulls over and opens the hood Everytime a CEL comes on like something horrible just happened. Usually you can drive around for a few years with a CEL because it's something harmless. Without an OBD reader literally in the car(not a bad idea in the future) there's not much you can really do. She should have probs pulled over when she felt heat wasn't working and CEL on but it's enormously tempting to not stop on the side of the road far from home with no heat..... btw check engine light was showing I think P0117 bad engine coolant sensor.

stilll feel pretty horrible about this, I don't have a garage and the weather has just been brutal. But life will go on I suppose.

I spent like 15 mins prepping her to say listen this car may never drive again, noting how changing the oil late leads to the horrible consumption we've seen(rude to make her feel like it's her fault anyways), turns out I'm just a big jerk! I came clean about the hose and told her, although I was doing a piss poor job disguising my discovery if I was trying to hide that fact, we literally found my watch that wen missing a week ago on top of the oil fill cap! Haha! At least now noone we know will ever ask me for help fixing their cars and I probably will never help anyone fix their car again.

Also it will be nice to put a motor in there that isn't consuming so much oil. Holy crap her car would eat oil. So if I can swap In a motor for around 1k and give her a few more years with this car she loves that will hopefully be great. But the thing is it's got something over 200k so I'm worried soon something else in the electrical side will go like the battery or idek. Never work on cars unless I have to. I said I was a professional mechanic but I work on Airplanes lol.

Thank you for all of the replies. If I do a motor swap I will try to document it pretty well especially if I come up with some different tricks or tips. I'll be sure to post a thread here for future Prius owners to learn from.

I honestly will say I have no problems driving the Prius and actually enjoy it.

 

Cosmo, I'm in Salem MA, but that's very generous of you to offer.