Engine Gasket Problems

There's a guy on here who is based out of Oklahoma and he puts Gen4 engines in Gen3 Prius in one day in your driveway for $1500. So if I were you I'd keep an eye out for a used low-mileage gen3 Prius with failed engine and bad hybrid battery for super cheap and have this dude put in a Gen4 engine with a Nexcell Lithium pack.

And I offer unlimited tech support if you buy with my affiliate link: https://projectlithium.com/?ref=9qLPw

 

My 2 cents: it's not the head gasket itself that's the weak link, it's the 3rd gen Prius (and Prius v) EGR system (including intake manifold), getting clogged with carbon, that causes the head gaskets to fail. I would get on cleaning the EGR system, every 50K miles at least. See first 2 links in my signature. (on a phone turn it landscape to see signature)

 

I wonder if @ChapmanF is gonna show up with yet another tired old rebuttal about you can't prove any connection between EGR failure and headgasket failure... I mean only thing more consistent then premature Gen3 engine failure is Chapman telling us there's no way we'll ever be able to prove what causes it. It's one of life's great mysteries and that's all you need to know!

 

Since we’re in the gen3 forums, I’m going to say they stopped making them in 2015.
However, if you mean Prius v, the engine and problems are the same and was made a couple more years.
Best you can hope for is later 2014 or newer, at least the pistons and rings were upgraded

 

Or "give me proof" Norton.

For me, there's so many correlations between clogged EGR and blown head gasket, I'm cleaning first, asking questions later.

 

It’s always worth cleaning the egr circuit, since it’s prone to clogging, but since mine stutters at low rpm and light load, with only 25k on the clock, I have to wonder if there isn’t more to it.
Like very short engine runs because it comes on by itself every 124 miles, or fires up when I run out of juice a half mile from destination

 

I read on here that the 4th generations are starting to have head gasket problems also.
Not sure if it is a continueing problem from the Gen3 engines or unrelated.
Only time will tell.
I went 301,000 on mine.

 

Until we're past the 2ZZ engine you will have these issues.

 

Seems like a kinda weird thing to say. I mean, the ways of proving some hypothesis you think might be true are pretty darned well understood, and even taught in classes all over the world.

So well understood, even, that when people choose to just bloviate for years and avoid taking up the task of doing that, it sort of stands out.

 

At what miles did you do your first EGR cleaning?

 

I remember car folks talking about the open deck design being inherently weak when it was being discussed in the early to mid '80s there were big to do's about it over on Toyota mods.com which has been around since the internet first started engineering people in the discussion included folks from New Zealand Japan and all around the world these are guys who fly planes and race Toyota cars amongst other things. And Toyota didn't start designing or building these things until I'm not sure what year but the guys on Toyota mods and what have you weren't interested in these designs of engines anyway We were more into the beams 3S GTE type of things and what have you The z engines didn't come until way later.

 

You're welcome to use the EGR as your scapegoat, but the two are not linked. If the HG's were failing due to a clogged EGR, we would probably see faults for insufficient EGR flow first.

Plenty of engines have HG failures for a variety of reasons that are not obvious in the field. Honda 1.5T's come to mind. Some of the Camry Hybrids. It has to do with the design of the gasket, the thickness of the bolts used, etc.

 

Plus massive thermal cycling and uneven cylinder cooling. Both improved in gen4. Yes gen3 egrs clog since they pick up exhaust before the cat and the egr cooler is too small. Both improved in gen4. Then the low tension rings increasing blowby. Improved in mid 2014. Liquids sloshing around in the intake manifold.

 

so many possibilities, so little time...

 

Pick one, because those aren't independent changes. The Gen 4 picks up the gas after the cat where the pressure is lower, and the "too small" cooler is simply sized equivalently for the given pressure.

 

That a engine in the Camry is well known for very similar failures You see them all over the country and perfect condition for sale with blown engines whether the center section is failed and rattled itself to death and put a hole in the mess or the head gasket is failed I'm not sure but they're all over the country the same guy who makes the videos working on the Priuses has done many videos of the Camry before the Prius issue was discovered.

 

Toyota Oil Burners

• 2007-2011 Toyota Camry HV (Hybrid)
• 2007-09 Toyota Camry 2.4L (07 Camry is the worst, best 13-15)
• 2009-2011 Toyota Camry 2.5L 2AR Engine
• 2009-11 Toyota Corolla XRS
• 2009-13 Toyota Matrix 2AZ Engine
• 2006-08 Toyota RAV4
• 2009-2012 Toyota Rav4 2.5L 2AR Engine
• 2007-08 Toyota Solara
• 2007-09 Scion tC
• 2008-15 Scion xB
• 2010-14 Prius 1.8L
• 2005 Avalon V6 (vvti gear)
• 2007-10 Sienna (vvti gear)

Vin verification for good pistons and rings on a 2014. Last six digits would be higher than 358779 from Plant 0 or higher than 791355 from Plant 1.


Poorly designed low tension pistons and rings have a tendency to allow blowby. You then have contaminated oil lubricating the rings and causing deposits. Toyota endorsed 10,000 mile oil changes with the first two free made things worse. Eventually the deposits get worse and the rings don't seal as well as they used to, allowing more fuel and combustion gasses to enter the crankcase. Then the pcv and egr systems (gen3) picks up more oil and you have carbon everywhere increasing fast.


And enters gen3 egr systems with intakes before the catalytic converters

 

I wanna try Deves swedish spring steel rings throughout the the 2zz engine . But will probably never get around to it as I'm hoping not to have to deal with this engine much longer when this one blows up we should be long into the 2 l or whatever is coming down next for the smaller hybrid series engine . Should be a 2 l something that they may be using in other countries already. I don't know how the 1Z and 2Z in Corolla do so well. But the detuned 2 ZZ. In Prii does so bad. Maybe it's the Atkinson cycle and it constantly regurgitating its own puke like a mama bird feeding is young is causing all the mess internally in this system. Because my Corollas will run right up to 300k they'll be burning oil by then but my God they generally don't have blown head gaskets and they're not rattling themselves to death this seems to be particular to something to do with this Atkinson cycle. Didn't Mazda do something with the something called the Miller cycle engine All these people that want to create their own cycle series for the four stroke engine seem to not do so well.