I have been a member here since 2020. I lurked and read cool threads but never needed to post since my cars only needed general maintenance. Well that changed this month as both needed egr/manifold cleaning and one now has possibly blown the head gasket (oil in the reservoir). I have posted and now for some reason all of my thread/responses are under moderation. It also is giving me a notification that "Your account currently has Private Messaging capabilities restricted due to account inactivity. Please contact the site admin if you would like these capabilities turned back on. Makes it hard to have an ongoing conversation. message has been sent to contact admin also.
As part of spam control (this is why we can’t have nice things), we’ve restrict the first number of posts of any new member so that we don’t get overwhelmed by bots who can post rapidly. I’ve enabled your PM privileges.
Welcome to finally participating in PriusChat... The symptom of headgasket failure in Gen3 is loss of coolant, not oil in the reservoir? Also which reservoir are you referring to? As for inspection, if you're doing spark plugs you can put a borescope that plugs into your phone (bought one for $8 on Tiktok) and see if piston one or two are clean. If they are clean compared to 3 & 4 that means you have coolant washing the piston and have a bad head gasket. The good news is that some people can go years after the first signs of head gasket failure if they keep their engine from getting too hot. Of course if you wait too long you can end up with a bent rod or damaged transmission dampener.
