Check hybrid system after head gasket changed

Discussion in 'Gen 3 Prius Care, Maintenance & Troubleshooting' started by Mellyman666, Dec 20, 2023.

  1. Mellyman666

    Mellyman666 Member

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    performed a complete head gasket change on my 2010 Gen 3 Prius (with a lot of your help so thank you very much!!).
    This was completed a week ago. I ran the car for test drives before putting on highway and all went fine. For the past week I’ve taken the car without issue and I didn’t even have check engine lights or whatever after initial start up.

    today I was on the highway, and was going about 100km/h. I felt like the car was losing power but no weird noises or anything so I tried pushing the pedal harder to accelerate and the “check hybrid engine” as well as the check engine light came on immediately. I then lost engine power and cruised on the speed I had to a safe stop.


    I shut down the car at the moment. When I waited a while and tried it again, I am able to have a bit of acceleration (max 20km/h) but it’s as if the engine starts and then dies down.

    when I restarted my Prius, I took it for a spin with a mechanic just to be cautious and he said everything seemed fine.


    My obvious question is what the hell do I do lol I saw a few people with similar issues. I was quite proud of my work and having completed the job but now am stressing if it was all for nothing.
    My urgent question however is, do I risk it and drive home (about 12km away on small roads) going really slow, or so I leave it shut off and tow it home?
    Will driving it for an extra 15 mins do more damage?
    Thanks a bunch!
     
  2. Tombukt2

    Tombukt2 Senior Member

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    If the engine is damaged from the head gasket failing and the rattling you're not going to damage it anymore than that other than eventually it will fail Lock up a rod will break whatever none of this is salvageable at this point well it doesn't sound like it anyway this is why you don't do this with the ZZ engine but other people have and have made it work blah blah blah so it's your own crapshoot if you like and that's that you took the gamble and now here you are we are whatever. So let's see what happens I would say drive it home The loss of power I mean you should have something a vacuum leak something possibly going on You need to just look over things on the side of the road and drive it home slowly The engine cuts on and then loses power you sure your traction battery's in good shape when we changed our engine in the 2013 car was running fine when we took it off the road far as we could tell other than the knocking noise we put it all back together with another engine another transmission too couldn't get it to start without codes and a bunch of BS look under the hood of the traction battery in the back of the car and it looks like pure h a l e. Got our buddy the hybrid doctor to get us a balanced rack and got all that squared away. Smooth sailing from that point on.
     
  3. bdc101

    bdc101 Member

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    So now the car runs and drives fine?

    Did it overheat? If not, did you pull codes to find out what stopped the car?

    Without knowing what caused the car to stop, it's hard to say whether it's safe to drive.
     
  4. Mellyman666

    Mellyman666 Member

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    Figured it out! The fuel line unplugged/was not properly plugged. So in accelerating I think I made it unclip completely (whereas it was probably a little clipped before) and I lost a lot of gas on the floor. Once I reclipped it , car immediately went back to normal and was able to drive now I just gotta get rid of all these codes.
    Also the tow truck guy was the one who reclipped the fuel line and the little plastic casing fell, going to need to find that too, hopefully it’s not essential cause I need to drive that car tomorrow
     
  5. Mellyman666

    Mellyman666 Member

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    I think it turned out to just be the fuel like that was badly clipped. I found it leaking at that source, clipped it back in and problem seemed solved. Also lost a lot of gas so would make sense that it was probably badly clipped and by accelerating so much it was the last straw and popped off.
    I only go the system hybrid warning however at one point when I needed to put it in neutral for the tow truck, I saw a warning about traction battery but only at that one moment and I must admit A LOT of lights were going off at that point so not sure if it’s actually a warning or just the car being overwhelmed from so much going on and showing all different lights
     
  6. bdc101

    bdc101 Member

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    Schnikeys! lucky to not have died in a fire.
     
  7. Tombukt2

    Tombukt2 Senior Member

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    That's a Gen 3 soon you should be looking at your hybrid battery and it's connections before they get too far gone and everything is saveable