Blown head gasket, should I swap engines or... ?

I skimmed through the one about swapping an engine, since if I do the work myself that's what I'll do. I agree, excellent work and makes me more inclined to have them do the work if I can swing it.

 

Yeah, that's the kind of details I wanted! It's good to hear that it's like most old cars I've had with many small issues and some big ones, but still your daily driver. That confirms my plans to sell it in another 5-ish years with around 200k, and hope to pass it on before the next big problem. If I do an engine swap, I'm not sure I need the rebuilt one from Hybrid Pit when the rest of it will get expensive long before the engine has problems.

Oh, I didn't know there's improvements to the EGR valve and ECU software - do you have a link or should I just search the forum? And why did you change the EGR cooler instead of cleaning it? It seemed relatively easy when I did it recently.

Thanks, I'll do that today. If I can drive the car there, it would be my cheapest and quickest option, and I would trust their work for as long as I want to keep the car.

I've been surprised at the prices others have paid for the same work on the brake booster, but there's only one Toyota dealer in the area, one branch is 30 minutes away, another is an hour away, the third is 1.5 hours away. I'd have to drive 3 hours to Eugene or Redding to the nearest non-Lithia dealership. And there's only one good local independent shop that I know of in town; there are several others in the area but none specialize in hybrids or even in Japanese cars, so I'm not inclined to spend a week shuttling the car around to pay for five estimates. This hasn't been a problem in the 10 years we've lived here since I do as much work as I can, and haven't yet needed major work like this.

Oh, I would have done that if I'd known! I read lots of threads here back when the brake booster failed, but didn't see that. Both the independent shop and the dealer quoted me the same amount and said the part has to be matched to the VIN and is only available directly from Toyota, so I thought I was over a barrel. Lesson: post here first!

 

Oh, I didn't know! Is that part of the standard warranty or a TSB? I was never planning to keep it past 20 years old, so that's one less shoe waiting to drop and one more reason not to sell it as is now.

 

I had the same experience Bisco described: over a period of a few months I noticed the buzzing sound when opening the driver's door after it was parked overnight went longer and longer, and noticed it happening more often while driving. There are a number of little electrical pumps and things that buzz on hybrid cars at different times and I'd never tried to understand what was what, until we got the CEL for the brake booster. It's the issue described in the TSB and covered for certain cars during certain time periods, ours was unfortunately almost a year past the expiration of the TSB so we had to pay out of pocket. Your 2014 may be at the very end of the coverage period now, but you can't claim the extended warranty pre-emptively: You need to have the specific CEL codes and it needs to be tested by the dealer. But apparently Hybrid Pit has rebuilt ones they'll sell you for only $600!

Good info, thanks. You're much closer than I am, but it's still only around 350 miles away and would be my cheapest and quickest option - I'll call them today!