Toyota Prius coolant leak.

Since you caught it early and stopped driving, hopefully the head itself is Ok.

Pixel XL ?

 

because I bought a Scion brand new from this dealership in 2008 and traded it in for this used 2014 prius back in May of 2018. I also own a 2005. I basically called and insisted that a prius with only 70k miles on it shouldn't be blowing a head gasket and that I wanted assistance with the problem.

 

let's hope!

 

OK. Do you think is was more the "shouldn't be blowing a CHG at 70k", or more the prior ownership history?

 

i think it was more of a shouldn't be blowing head gaskets than anything else.

 

Well I would hope so, but you never can tell. I had a CHG fail at 29,000 miles (but more than 36 months) on a Dodge Grand Caravan (rear bank, PITA to access) that Dodge refused to offer a remedy. Car ran with several cans of Barrs Leaks in it for the rest of its natural life (115,000 miles).

 

it's still at the dealership. I had an update two days ago that the head and block look straight but they were taking the head to a shop to make sure it wasn't leaking.

 

I have a 2012 prius v that has the same coolant leak.

Its at the dealership and they say its leaking into the engine but dont know how. They said hey have to take the emgine out which costs $2050. Is that outrageous especially when they arent installing a new engine?

I have 185k miles on this car and still owe 7k on it. What do u experts recommend? Shop around? Or is this pricing inline with what i should expect

 

what part of the engine is it leaking into ? If it's a cylinder they can do a leak down test without pulling the motor. it tests to see if the head gasket is bad.

 

Unfortunatley they didnt say as they just wanted to take the whole engine out. So i declined. Is it something that i can figure out on my own?

 

That’s just to take the engine out? That’s 20.5 hours labor. Which tells me they are dropping the entire front subframe out. Totally not necessary. The engine will come nicely out the top in a matter of a few hours. But you can rent a “combustion leak detector” from most parts stores. Put it in the coolant bottle with the ICE running (maintenance mode) and use the squeeze bulb to draw a vacuum on the fluid inside. If it changes color, the head gasket is blown.

 

Any update?

 

they said the head looks good, they mentioned having a small repair to one of the valves on the head or something but get the clear from the machine shop. still waiting to hear back. hopefully we pick it up this week after a month at the dealership.

 

These are the kind of problems that make the Gen2 superior to the Gen 3! I’m at 570,000 and never had a head gasket fail.


iPhone ?

 

because i bought this car from them 8 months ago with 70k miles on it and it's a $5,000 repair. I complained enough to get a concession.

 

They googled Prius HG repair and found you can rip the head off in a couple of hours.

 

Possibly. But you realize that technicians are paid on flat rate, right?

 

Yes, but what I meant was they saw how easy the job is compared to how the book said it should be done. They can only get away with charging the full labor time as long as people believe it takes that long to do the job.

 

What are you just buy a new engine and put it in there it’s much less than 5000?


iPhone ?

 

While there are ads showing the 2ZR-FXE engine remanufactured for way less then 5 grand, there are probably issues the dealer has with buying from “unapproved sources”. They can’t buy these engines from the source without jumping thru a number of hoops, which would cause the total price of installing one to be way more then the “repair” cost would be.