Replacing engine after I blew it up

welcome to priuschat! that's low mileage for a prius, but then again, after you replace the engine, who knows what's next?

 

unfortunately, you're way beyond my limited capabilities. and diagnosing a car on the internet is difficult at best. you probably ned to spend a few hundred to have a dealer hook up their computer and see what trouble codes are logged.

maybe find a cheap rental for a few months, or an old beater until the gen IV arrives?

 

Steve at http://www.autobeyours.co sells low mileage "long block" engines for about $500. He can install one in your Prius for about $2k (including the parts) as well. You would have to ship your Prius to him (southern Indiana - about $600), but when you get it back it would be a reliable vehicle. I would give him a call.

JeffD

 

Gonna' need the codes to see what all else might be wrong. It sounds like you blew the headgasket too when it overheated. White smoke out the exhaust means water in the combustion cylinder(s).

GOOD LUCK!

 

stop with the blue book B.S, its a guide at best.
you don't get anywhere close to "blue book"
dealers pay black book auction wholesale less repairs
private buyers shop for the cheapest one they can get.
its 10 years old and might be worth 5 grand in near perfect condition the real world
check e bay and see what real people are willing to pay for a similar car.
ask yourself do you want to invest $2000 to get it running and hope the battery pack isn't damaged.
as the price of gas drops these cars are losing their value.

 

You're in a tough situation because as you know everything is un-guaranteed.

No guarantee a salvaged engine is going to solve your problems.
No guarantee a used vehicle is going to be perfect.

So given that baseline, I'd make my decision based primarily on two things, what I was capable of doing financially and what I personally wanted to do the most. None of the answers are particularly wrong or particularly right.

So then if it was me? I think with a vehicle nearing 10 model years old, I'd really take it as an opportunity for change. You hinted that "new" isn't out of the question. With regrets that this timing didn't happen after the next Gen get's released. The converse to that is people have been getting good deals on the exiting Gen 3.

But salvaged engine, used, or new vehicle- the choice is yours. They all come with various cost and risk. The best answer is the one you feel you most want to make.

 

I found a 2007 with 126990 miles in Doylestown for $7990. How much do you want to sink into a car that is selling for $7990? What is it worth as a lawn ornament?

I would cut my losses because I don't want to deal with restoring a car, because I can, and I believe I would have an outlet for the lawn ornament.

If you are going to rebuild the car, based on my experience I would replace the entire engine. The rebuilt short block I put in the Olds didn't last as long as I thought it should. Keep it long enough to buy a 2016.

If something catastrophic happened to my Prius today I would start shopping for a new one tomorrow. I believe the discounts on the 2015 MY will more than offset whatever improvements are in the 2016 MY.

As The Electric Me said, there is no right or wrong answer. You have to decide what is going to make you the happiest.

Best wishes for whichever way you go.

 

The waterpump failing (from the broken belt) and leaking out water likely is what killed the engine, however it also sounds like you were having other problems before that happened with the random lights and oil consumption.

When a water pump belt breaks, you wont get to go much farther before you need to stop, and just a little more before you have a blown head gasket or more. This isn't something that would have been going on for more than just a few miles.

 

The rule of thumb here is usually to repair up to a fairly high percentage of the real world value of your car.....but the rule of thumb for rules of thumb is that they're only a rule of thumb.
Opinions vary wildly about what percentage of the RWV of the car to kick over but usually smart people with money will put somewhere between 50 and 100 percent of the value of your car into a repair like this....with the alternative being spending 100 percent of the value of your car on another car to get you back to more or less where you were before you smoked your engine.
I always compare the value of the car running and not running.
A G2 with 130K in pristine condition is probably worth about 5000-6000 in a quick sale.
One without a motor is worth....what? $1,500????
This tells me that If I can shove a motor into this car for 3k then I'd be money ahead even if I got it running code-free and dumped it in a quick sale.

I think that if you're smart, you can put a long block in your car for less than $5K.
Say.....900-1200 for the motor and somewhere around 1500 for the labor would be my swag.
If I woke up in a situation like yours that what I would be tempted to do, since car payments for a "new" G3 are going to be around $5-6K a year....every year.

Yes.
You can also suffer another casualty on this car and be forced to cut bait, but there's at least a good chance that you'll wind up money ahead trying to leg this car out to 200-250K.

If you continue to pay for new cars every 4-5 years then there's a 100-percent chance that you will lose more money than establishing a repair fund and buying cars every 10-12 years....and shocking though this may sound......actually saving the payments that you don't make for something outlandish like retirement.....kid's education....etc.

Your call.

Good Luck!!!

 

sounds like your belt came off because you didn't check it for cracks every month, which caused it to overheat. the lesson here is that you need to check your oil every fill up, and look at your belt, brakes, fluids, etc every other fill up. visual inspection is a very important part of regular maintenance. if you had checked your belt (and oil) like your supposed to, this probably would not have happened.

I doubt anything other than the engine was damaged when this happened, but I could be wrong. if it was me, I'd get a used low mileage engine and drop it in, but then I really prefer the gen 2 over the gen 3.

 

it's a personal issue, you really need to drive a gen III for yourself.

 

I don't like the gen 3 interior, but it is probably a better car in many ways. and I'm one of those idiots that gets attached to their car even though I know its an inanimate object. I still have my chevelle which I got when I was 19.

 

So here is the rub, I use 5W-30 engine oil...am I in danger ???

 

Depends on where you rub it.

In your 8-year-old motor?
It won't matter much.....as long as you're not running it low.

 

Ha ha very funny

No I got a new 2014 Toyota Prius C

 

The cap says 5W-20 so I was a bit curious