Cataclean and EGR Clog Codes

I've seen no indication that was what the manifold revision was even intended to do.

I think the best information we got here was that the way they changed the shape of the EGR passages was to make it less likely that the engine gets a snort of condensed water at startup out of those passages, when the weather conditions tend that way.

That was kind of an unrelated problem, but one that a lot of new owners of the first Gen 3s were discussing here as soon as their first year of ownership. It wasn't something like EGR clogging or head gasket issues that started appearing on the radar after some time and miles had passed.

Classic. They gave you the version of Techstream installed on their laptop.

It would be more interesting to know the calibration ID of the ECM firmware they flashed into your car.

Techstream will show that on the health check page. There might be other scan tools that can show it too.

 

What a surprise they're in for if they ever look at a Techstream health check screen.

 

The surprise being that there is a 'Calibration' column, with ID numbers in it.

 

This is getting surreal.

If the dealer takes their laptop, which they have, and they plug it into your car, and they click the ever-lovin' Health Check button in Techstream, which they have, the screen that comes back staring them in the face looks like this:



(The example, of course, came from somebody's thread where the car has a bunch of trouble codes. Never mind those.)

If they then look in the column that says Calibration at the top, in the row that says Engine and ECT at the left, in this example screenshot the calibration ID is 34712100. Right?

Now, according to T-SB-0027-16, which was the one about the newer EGR valve, if they installed the firmware update mentioned in that TSB for a 2010 Prius, it will now have the calibration ID 34715700.

If it has a lower calibration ID, they didn't install that firmware update.

If it has a higher calibration ID, somebody somewhere installed a newer firmware update than the one in that 2016 TSB, and newer probably contains whatever updated stuff they cared about.

 

I might not have all the details of your situation fresh in my mind. It's pretty much always better to include the codes in a post than just to say "all kinds of codes". It's ok to add whatever thoughts you have about which ones were already repaired or whatever, but without the codes themselves, it's hard for anyone to offer a second opinion.

It would be awfully hard for most ECUs to get a virus (it would pretty much have to have been put there by somebody using Techstream or another programming tool), and in general it's awfully rare for ECUs to go bad at all. Nearly every time somebody wants to conclude an ECU is bad, it's going to be something else.

If there are trouble codes, most of the time they mean what they tell you. But often people overestimate what a code is telling (for example, seeing some part's name in the code's fortune cookie, and thinking the code only means "replace this part", and then thinking "the code can't be right 'cause I replaced that already"). But a code only tells you that the conditions shown in its "detection condition" box in the repair manual were observed. A human needs to think out how many ways those conditions might have been produced.

 

May just been me, but a constantly attached OBD plug (for ScanGauge II) on my ‘10, was the apparent cause of a plethora of lights (mostly brake/traction related), Check Hybrid System warning, and work-to-rule brakes. Stopped using the SG after the third such event, no further problems.

 

I can't absolutely rule out a virus, but that'd be like extraterrestrials for a flying object. I'd ordinarily just buckle down and do the troubleshooting for a humdrum terrestrial cause first. If that truly can't be found, there's always the green men.

 

As far as I can figure, the way Toyota makes Techstream available (and also the service literature on TIS) is designed to fit the Massachusetts Right-to-Repair law to the letter, work-to-rule, not a whit more or less. The Massachusetts law being the one the car lobby preemptively agreed to accept everywhere, lest some other state pass a better one.

It makes me kind of wonder how much greener the pastures will be with another manufacturer. From what I hear, they're not very green with Tesla, for example.

There's a thread where mr_guy_mann reviews a bunch of non-Techstream alternatives that provide a lot, sometimes even most, of what you can do with Techstream. His testing is with Gen 2, but the products that review well there are probably not bad to try on Gen 3 either. I'm going to assume some of those can also show you calibration IDs, but maybe @mr_guy_mann has more information on that.

Gen2 OBD2 app review | PriusChat

 

Seems to be that the service manager finally got to the problem, the machanic didn't
do his or her job, and lied about it.
So now he's trying to make it right. I think you should give him another chance to make it right
for you.

 

I don't think I've seen any sign that gunk on the MAP sensor prevents it from telling you what the MAP is.