I haven't read the thread exhaustively: did anyone try looking with a boroscope, pull the plugs and look into the cylinders?
I personally haven't, I will have to follow up with Toyota to see what steps they took to investigate.
you are going to drive yourself insane thinking a car over 10 years old is going to be perfect.. they all make noises and burn oil..its a machine and one day it will blow up on the side of the road no matter how well you care for it.. dont waste your time or money trying for perfection just drive it until the day come when you wave bye bye to it as its hauled off to the junk yard..start saving money now for its replacement.. if cars lasted forever they cant sell you a new one. be happy you got the free combo meter replaced I missed the dead line by 9 days, had to do it myself
A very good word, my friend. I'm just trying to do as much preventative maintenance as I can to help make my car last as long as possible.
Ok, So this thread is timely for me as I was also experiencing pinging with my 09. I've worked on cars most of my life, road raced, modified, etc...and know what pre ignition sounds like... So, I started adding MMO to my gas tank. I added a few ounces to ever tank for about two weeks (I uber with my prius and rack up the miles...putting gas in it every other day) I had also considered adding seafoam through the intake to see if that would help...however, after two weeks the pinging was gone from the mmo, so I never actually seafoamed my prius. 09 with 160 miles on it. Ok, so I also have a 2001 chevy s10 which I inherited from my mom. I got it about 6 months ago. It has had this bad hesitation on acceleration for the past three or four years. My mom had taken it into the mechanic a few times (she knows I'm usually busy with my own stuff and life and didn't want to bother me)...and the mechanic replaced a sensor one time, and did something else another time...but the problem has persisted. So, when I got it six months ago, I did the trickle thing with seafoam into the brake booster vacuum hose. It did produce a shit ton of white smoke. But, the problem was still there. So I read up about the spider injectors being a common issue...and since I knew it was fuel related, I planned on spending the 400 for new injectors. Well about a week ago I happened upon this farm project guy on youtube and his video of his old ford ranger and he used seafoam spray directly into the intake butterfly valve...and it fixed his poorly running truck. So a few days ago I went and paid 13 bucks for the seafoam spray. Pulled the intake air filter plenum to expose the butterfly valve, put a stick on the gas pedal to idle it at about 2K rpm, and sprayed the seafoam in. Just like in the farm project vid, I would immediately see the carbon around the butterfly clear up. I let it sit 15 minutes, started it up, and to my surprise there was almost no white smoke However, I then drove it. And let me tell you that it drives like a new truck now. No hesitation, even idle, more power. I'm so happy to have fixed it with a bottle of snake oil after nearly four years of living with it running so poorly. So to the OP. I would run MMO in every tank for a month or so and see if that clears it up. If it doesn't, I would seafoam SPRAY directly into the intake. I bet that solves your problem. I'll put money on it.
Don't put seafoam you will jack up the engine Try using 91 or 93 octane fuel this car has VVT with upto 13:1 compression ratio, the compression ratio tends to go up overtime because of carbon build up etc.. fine if it's a older car from the 70s or before your mechanic is an idiot . OR is your prius fitted with an actual lawnmower engine? it could destroy the cat and other stuff leading to costly repairs use something with polyetheramine (PEA) as it's designed to work in modern engines
