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Discussion in 'Gen 3 Prius Fuel Economy' started by William Yorston, Apr 24, 2023.

  1. William Yorston

    William Yorston Junior Member

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    Ok, when I first bought 2011 Gen 3 I could achieve low 50's mpg in town. It would drop to 46-48 on the highway, we have lots 80 mph we're I live.

    At 130,000i noticed it dropping significantly. Decided I liked the car but knew it needed maintenance. I replaced the hybrid battery with a Nexcell lithium, replaced the spark plugs, replaced the egr valve with new, cleaned out the tubed, replaced PCV, replaced all fluids. All Coolant, transmission and even a new 12v start battery I wanted to last a lot longer.

    I now get 42 mpg in town and 44 on the highway up to 65 mph. At 80 it drops to 38 mpg. This is all via the computer which is close enough for me. That's significantly lower than when I first got the car with 50,000 miles. Anything else I should check. Thanks in advance.
     
    #1 William Yorston, Apr 24, 2023
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 28, 2023
  2. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    what had it dropped to before doing all the work?
     
  3. schja01

    schja01 One of very few in Chicagoland

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    Tires now vs then?
     
  4. William Yorston

    William Yorston Junior Member

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    Dropped to 38 in town, $3000 to pick up 4 mpg
     
    bisco likes this.
  5. William Yorston

    William Yorston Junior Member

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    Tires have been replaced
     
  6. sam spade 2

    sam spade 2 Senior Member

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    At ~15 years old and 130K miles, most internal combustion engines loose some efficiency.
    Some more than others.
    It is not always possible to single out just one factor.
     
  7. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    maybe do a throttle body cleaning. i notice you said 2006, and we're in the gen 2 forum. but with egr, is it the 2011 in your info?

    did you do the whole egr circuit including the 4 small ports in the intake manifold?
     
  8. schja01

    schja01 One of very few in Chicagoland

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    With low rolling friction models?
     
  9. wjtracy

    wjtracy Senior Member

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    I am confused about 2006 Gen3.
    If it's a Gen2 we gotta talk about warm -up time, Gen3 better but still.
    Believe our 2020RAV4HV does as good as our 2006 Prius did around town
    Long drives the Gen2 could do 50 MPG
     
  10. William Yorston

    William Yorston Junior Member

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    So sorry. It's a 2011
     
  11. Tideland Prius

    Tideland Prius Moderator of the North
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    *Moved to Gen 3 forum*

    *Fixed OP's model year*
     
  12. nicoj36

    nicoj36 Active Member

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    Do this reset here by simply using a paper-clip. I've gotten back 4-5 mpg just by doing this reset. Also, your MAF sensor is often overlooked and never cleaned after 100k+ miles, give that a clean with a MAF cleaner and you should be back to your original MPGs.

    edit: get a bottle of chevron fuel treatment also, redline is also good.
     
  13. sam spade 2

    sam spade 2 Senior Member

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    You have caused the calculation to start over.
    That has actually gained you NOTHING.
     
  14. nicoj36

    nicoj36 Active Member

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    This is not a simple reset of the odometer and MPG calculator, this also resets the ECU. Not everything is mechanical either.
     
  15. AzusaPrius

    AzusaPrius Senior Member

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    Just to throw it out there, if you get a wheel alignment from Firestone, they reset the angle sensor as part of the process.
     
  16. rjparker

    rjparker Tu Humilde Sirviente

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    Your brakes could be dragging, wheel bearings can go bad but the most likely thing is your driving and braking habits. You have to accelerate calmly and brake in advance so regen is maximized. There is no hope at 80 mph; mpg suffers over 60mph.

    Your catalytic converter could be clogging due to flawed piston rings. To really return to new you check all these things, change your driving habits and get an engine rebuild that eliminates excessive intake and head carbon build up. These engines are reaally bad about carbon. A rebuild gets new rings and pistons which were flawed originally and don't last long.

    Or trade the 12 soon to be 13 year old car.
     
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  17. sam spade 2

    sam spade 2 Senior Member

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    And I repeat that you are fooling yourself.

    The built-in "MPG calculator" is wildly inaccurate.
    So are short mileage runs.

    But you can believe whatever you please.
     
  18. nicoj36

    nicoj36 Active Member

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    Congratulations. You are the first one ever in Priuschat to claim the Prius odometer to be false with inaccurate mileages. Your claims would make odometers read higher than what it actually has. For example, if a Prius says it's doing 50mpg, but you claim it's inaccurate so let's say it's actually only doing 40mpg. That is a whopping 20%. Now, if the car's odometer says its ran 150,000 miles, that would be off by 20% (30,000 miles) as well and it would make it only have 120,000 miles. Toyota would have had lawsuits and recalls for inaccurate odometers and stopped production of Priuses long ago if that was the case.

    You might as well tell the OP his MPG readings are 'wildly inaccurate' and he's still actually pulling 50 mpgs despite the low 40s his odometer tells him.
     
    #18 nicoj36, May 1, 2023
    Last edited: May 1, 2023
  19. sam spade 2

    sam spade 2 Senior Member

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    Nobody in this thread said "odometer" except you. Never. Nowhere.

    And you are not the first one to mis-read a post and go flying off on a meaningless rant.
     
  20. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    That exact video has come up here and been discussed before.

    It manages to combine several amusing things in one video:

    1. It's a perfectly good video for showing the procedure for reading trouble codes without a scan tool. Which is all it shows. Only the person making it doesn't understand that's what he's showing, and he doesn't even realize he can read the trouble codes while they are blinking off there on the camera.
    2. He thinks it's a reset procedure, which it isn't ...
    3. ... and he thinks it's specifically a reset procedure for the steering angle sensor, which doesn't have one (the car auto-calibrates that sensor).

    So, it's not that the procedure shown there isn't useful for something. It is perfectly useful for reading trouble codes when you haven't got a scan tool, and anybody who wants to know more about it can find it completely described in the repair manual ... or on our wiki page here:

    Blink (a/k/a Flash) Codes – How to. | PriusChat

    And it's not that there aren't some reset procedures. That isn't one, but there are some, and anybody who wants to know more about them can find them completely described in the repair manual.

    And it's not that there isn't a steering angle sensor. There is one, but the car auto-calibrates it, making it one of the sensors in the car for which there isn't a special reset procedure.

    It's just that the video is chock full of the things we try to help people not do: ignoring what your codes are telling you, applying random procedures without knowing what they do, jumping to bogus conclusions because of something you saw when you did. It could almost be used as a teaching example for all of those.

    And it illustrates a big problem with going to youtube for information, which is that more youtube videos are like that than not. There seems to be a simple reason. Many people who have just gone and learned what they need from the repair manual, and done that, and solved their issue without any fuss, will not be out there making videos about it. They figure it was pretty straightforward what they did, and you'd probably do the same, and you wouldn't need their video to do it.

    Much more often, on the other hand, people who have messed around with some half-understood procedure they heard about somewhere else, and haven't even checked in the manual to see if they've even understood what it is they are doing, will decide they have discovered some secret something the whole youtube-viewing world needs to know about.

    And then that gets picked up over and over again in "I saw this thing on youtube" posts.
     
    Brian1954 likes this.