New to me 2012 Prius V 245k miles // $4500

Examine the coolant ("for 1 week") for what? I'll be driving this for months/years without checking.

Btw --- My mechanic just finished a gen 2 engine swap for me. He has a gen 3 of mine doing a gen 4 swap. And another gen 3 doing gen 4 engine swap in it. I rent them out I have a fleet of them.

That's his current tasks for the next couple weeks. Very used to putting gen 4s in gen 3s.

Literally doing that to 2 of my gen 3s right now.

I would be a little annoyed biting the $2500 repair but wouldn't be new to me. And I'd much rather have a gen 4 engine in it.

But, I'm gonna put 80 to 90% odds not a thing wrong with my Prius V. The first clue will be when I go to start it tomorrow morning.

 

I haven't even popped the hood on my car yet (it's cold). I know the oil won't burn because the guy has a 5000 mile interval sticker from the Toyota dealership (and 2nd clue is he takes his car to the Toyota dealership to begin with lol).

More I think about it this is 100% a brand new bad plug issue. Only happened after sitting 5+ hours (I'll say overnight).

It is actually physically impossible for the issue to have been present before. It was brought in from a new car dealership to the auction. Definitely sat many days. If they "cleared the code" it'd come right back and be misfiring like crazy on the cold start for a couple seconds.

It didn't arrive like that. It arrived with no cold start issue and no engine light (again, if they deleted code it would have came right back).

There is only 1 other possibility: "The earliest sign of a gen 3 headgasket issue magically happened 2 days after I bought it".

I'm gonna go with common sense and say it was shot plugs with 150k miles on them.

 

I buy them as new car trade-ins (seller is a new car dealership) from dealers auction. I don't see the early symptoms. 99% of time nothing major wrong but you get screwed once in a while. They'll come in smoking (minor and sometimes major smoke) and it is completely obvious.

I plan on keeping this one so I'll know soon enough.

 

1st issue with the car. Went to warm up the car from 8am to about 8:20am......Very frigid temperature.

Approximately 0 degrees.

Buttons on dash were even a little frozen as I set to high temp defrost.

Came back out at 8:20am car still cold and I noticed: "Hmmm...A/C button accidentally was on I've been running it with AC for 20 minutes".

Press button off and still cold.....Drive 5-8 minutes to drop daughter off at school.....Realize obviously a problem cause it is still blowing cold.

Drop her off, go to parts store suspect low coolant.....Pop hood, reservoir appears to be frozen!

Drove back home and got back around 8:40am....I know not good to run 40-45 minutes with frozen coolant reservoir but didn't have dash lights, no funny noises, still the indestructible Prius engine running as smooth as new.

 

About 26 degrees today and I started by adding a splash of coolant (pic of level in case "HG" and drops over time...you can see prior level from video above).

Heat works strong. I suspect it was frozen or partially frozen yesterday cause it idles and/or ran for 45 minutes with ice cold "heat"!

I didn't exactly place a stick inside the reservoir and poke it to see if it was indeed frozen/solid....But appeared to be and there was ice around the top.

Question: What does the "B" line indicate on the reservoir. I am definitely a little past full but well below the "B"