2012 Prius V or 2010 Prius same price

the other way

 

Do you think the Prius's on FB Marketplace are overall, in general,....can you find a good Pius that you can expect a few years out of.
I bought a 2010. Keep reading and watching where maintenance is expected in a sense, I don't know yet, and it can be expensive. I paid $5,500 for my winter grey Prius 2 weeks ago.
Still getting used to it. Read about EGR, pcv, catch can, battery fan, battery itself, did I buy a money pit at 198k miles?

 

You're going to have a lot of problems...................

 

Start saving $10k for unexpected repairs.

It is a bad design engine. The engine burns oil and has excessive liquid build up in the intake manifold. Flawed piston ring design was updated in mid 2014. Oil / condensate mix in the intake along with blowby fed to the cylinders via the egr creates carbon and preignition. Egr intake is before the cat on these years; gen4 egr intake is after the cat and therefore much cleaner. Thermal cycling is also a problem for the cylinders due to stop start and poor coolant passage design. Cylinder insulators and revised coolant passages remedied uneven temps in gen4.

Generally these factors create a minor head warpage that allows the coolant into the cylinder, particularly after a complete cool off. The coolant may or may not temporarily foul the plug. At first the engine heats up and stops the coolant loss before it is really noticeable except for startup rattling. The plug starts firing and the engine runs fine, typically for the rest of the day. People incorrectly think it is plugs, coils, injectors or clogged egr, even though it runs fine after a few seconds, wasting time and money. Heads must be machined with a head gasket job.

Occasionally the startup rattling and short duration coolant fouling may bend the connecting rod slightly. This is often unnoticed during a head gasket job, leading to a second failure a few miles later when the rod goes. Or the rattling is masked with a sealer allowing more time for the bent rod to break.

The damper is just that, a short term slippage mechanism when the engine rpms are not exactly matched by the electric motors through the planetary gears. This slippage is the startup rattling you hear. There is no mechanical disconnect like you get with a clutch or torque converter.

The best solution to keep a 2010-2014 Prius running long term after a head gasket fail is to rebuild a used engine with revised pistons and rings, remachine the head, clean the egr cooler and then change oil after 5k miles rather than 10k.

By the way, a later model spin on oil filter housing will bolt on. A high quality oil catch can with sintered bronze filter is recommended on the pcv line but only if the owner can be counted on to empty it. The pcv intake was also revised on gen4.

Bottom line: This engine is a bad design starting with low tension rings, a bad egr design, a poor cylinder coolant strategy, a pcv intake too low on the block, 40f thermal cycling many times during a drive cycle particularly in stop and go or when excessively "idling", aggravated by the parts cannon and block sealers