Gen 3 Prius Owners (2010–2015) – Important Action on Head Gasket & Hybrid System Failures

it's one thing to replace inverters, and a whole nuther to replace engines. the inverter lawsuit was about safety

 

The court also ruled that Toyota must fix it, even if it's a salvaged car. In other words, If someone puts together a FrankenPrius - Toyota must fix that inverter too as long as the VIN meets the inverter suit parameters..........

 

There is a somewhat astounding statement in my North American 2010 Prius Owner’s Manual:



I also got this letter from Toyota Canada:

 

The letter makes another appearance with a red circle around "While the majority of vehicles will not experience this condition", but no red circle around what condition the letter was about.

The condition that particular letter was about is (just above the red circle that's there) "a sticking EGR valve due to excess carbon build-up" when that condition causes cold start-up misfiring.

I don't actually know how many vehicles ever do experience that condition. There are occasional posts here where people have found their EGR valve stuck with carbon build-up, but it doesn't seem like a lot of them.

Other conditions, like rutted ski jumps and clogged coolers, may be encountered more often. (And, of course, a notorious condition that can cause cold start-up misfiring is a damaged head gasket, whatever may have caused that.)

 

Sorry should've of been clearer on my post; 300K miles not KM

That quart for every 600 miles oil burn seems to be industry standard. I believe Subaru also uses that standard to determine engine replacement. Mind you that this consumption would empty your oil sump in less than 2500 miles - for those that don't check their oil levels be it 5K or 10K mile oil change intervals......

 

There was a guy from the UK that had 200K+ miles on the clock on a very early gen4. Only did oil changes but didn't do coolant change. His EGR valve locked-up and had a slight hesitation on acceleration. The EGR error code was there the entire time he was parts swapping.
He did plugs, coils, throttle body clean-out x2; before jumping on to the forum to ask us.
He posted pictures afterwards and the jammed valve looked more corrosion than carbon fouled.

 

New to Prius, my folks gave us their 2011 a year ago, super clean car, 175000 miles. My daughter drove it for a year at college and it started messing up. Head gasket, intake and $7000 lighter but my wife and I now have a Prius. Hopefully good to go. I’m going to check out the hybrid battery next.

 

Too late now but $7k sounds huge for that work...

 

It's always huge when you have someone else do the work. Cost of labor is absurdly high.

 

I've seen posts on here where people had a head gasket done for around $3-4k....