Driving without engine coolant to muffler shop (exhaust assembly stolen)

Bad idea. You don't say what mileage you're at so if you're over 160 170k probably headed to disaster anyway. That being said are you capable enough to roll the car half on a curb and half on the street to where the car is kind of lifted old ghetto lift if you want to look at it like that slide under the car which now cannot fall on you and use a quarter inch hose barb or something similar to put the two hoses together Don't even have to clamp them just slide them up on the barb now fill the jug up to the line above full what is it b or p or something like that and now drive to the muffler shop not spilling coolant minding your business and note how the car runs on the way Not the loudness nobody cares about that but the engine running itself so on and so forth I drove around in a generation two Prius with the complete cat unbolted from the manifold I don't know for about a week while I waited for the cheap cat to come from the biggest seller on eBay of catalytic converters $120 I think It's still on the car which is not running I'm just a parts car now so that's probably what I would try to do pull the car up on the curb down at the bottom of the street in your house or whatever I don't care if it's your apartment complex and you're not allowed to work on cars this is not going to take 60 seconds to slide the barb on and be back in the driver seat driving over to the water hose or whatever fill up the Degas bottle and head to the muffler shop.?

 

Before I made my last post I generally didn't do what I normally do and look at your profile so it seems you're in Connecticut so you're in a good cold zone so on a cold day like now in the winter time or late fall 7 minutes should net you pretty much nothing bad It's pretty cold out now if you're going to try to run there at 70 mph even then you're pushing a lot of cold air through the front of that car so on and so forth You probably make it You also don't state your mileage here so you may be in the throes of other things getting ready to happen to your engine anyway You are aware of all of the generation 3 issues with head gasket and piston rings and so on so if not you will be aware shortly. Are you want to make sure when you get your new converter and everything all plugged up You want to keep an eye on your engine make sure you're not starting to use oil excessively that will ruin your new converter etc etc then you're back in the same boat so just be careful and do some planning.

 

I would suggest having your car towed. It’s not cheap but the risk of doing more expensive damage is high. Call around to try to find a tow truck driver, or post on Facebook or some local neighborhood website, and call all your friends and contacts looking for one.

Or maybe find a good mechanic who can do the repair in your driveway or yard.

Then spend some serious time and effort looking to move somewhere safer. No one should live with such criminal risk if any options exist.

Good luck. This totally sucks.

 

If you loop the supply & return lines and tie them back, away from the hot exhaust gases - without pinching-off the lines, you'll be OK. Don't forget to refill your coolant and put a CAT shield and alarm on that car.

Good Luck

 

Are the coolant lines special, with elbows, or just straight sections? Either way, I’d get them ID’d and replaced.

 

In the kind of weather you're having in Connecticut right now it will take a lot longer than a few minutes of running with low coolant below the degas bottle marks . I'd have to go out and look at one of my gen 3's I'll do that this morning I guess I don't know about special clips or any of that nonsense I thought it was just hoses slit up on Barb's on the preheating thing up there near the cat or you just need a couple of barbs and a piece of hose to join that mess together so you're not leaking cooler but in 32° weather you'll need a lot more than a couple of minutes to tear things up but those couple of minutes you're not charging anything and nothing's happening so maybe better to just park it in a parking space and leave it until you can join the coolant lines and then take it for a real drive everyday and let it charge up or do whatever If you drive the car so rarely or so little maybe it's time to go back to a gas car seems like you're not having miles per gallon problems. You're having not enough usage problems possibly Prius don't like to sit as people keep finding out more and more they're more of mom's car to run to school grocery store Mom's work picking up the kids so on and so forth where Dad's car goes to the general motors parking lot and sits all day and then comes home and doesn't even want to stop at the grocery store or anything else Dad needs a gas car like a Yaris No not a suburban. Mom needs the Prius.

 

Just for getting the names right, the coolant lines attach to the heat exchanger, which is the third lump in this picture (starting from the engine, the four lumps are: two catalytic converters, then the heat exchanger, and finally the resonator after that).

Of course this display has a nice little identifying plaque on the heat exchanger, not found in the actual car.