Blown head gasket, should I swap engines or... ?

Yeah, that's the kind of details I wanted! It's good to hear that it's like most old cars I've had with many small issues and some big ones, but still your daily driver. That confirms my plans to sell it in another 5-ish years with around 200k, and hope to pass it on before the next big problem. If I do an engine swap, I'm not sure I need the rebuilt one from Hybrid Pit when the rest of it will get expensive long before the engine has problems.

Oh, I didn't know there's improvements to the EGR valve and ECU software - do you have a link or should I just search the forum? And why did you change the EGR cooler instead of cleaning it? It seemed relatively easy when I did it recently.

Thanks, I'll do that today. If I can drive the car there, it would be my cheapest and quickest option, and I would trust their work for as long as I want to keep the car.

I've been surprised at the prices others have paid for the same work on the brake booster, but there's only one Toyota dealer in the area, one branch is 30 minutes away, another is an hour away, the third is 1.5 hours away. I'd have to drive 3 hours to Eugene or Redding to the nearest non-Lithia dealership. And there's only one good local independent shop that I know of in town; there are several others in the area but none specialize in hybrids or even in Japanese cars, so I'm not inclined to spend a week shuttling the car around to pay for five estimates. This hasn't been a problem in the 10 years we've lived here since I do as much work as I can, and haven't yet needed major work like this.

Oh, I would have done that if I'd known! I read lots of threads here back when the brake booster failed, but didn't see that. Both the independent shop and the dealer quoted me the same amount and said the part has to be matched to the VIN and is only available directly from Toyota, so I thought I was over a barrel. Lesson: post here first!

 

Oh, I didn't know! Is that part of the standard warranty or a TSB? I was never planning to keep it past 20 years old, so that's one less shoe waiting to drop and one more reason not to sell it as is now.

 

I had the same experience Bisco described: over a period of a few months I noticed the buzzing sound when opening the driver's door after it was parked overnight went longer and longer, and noticed it happening more often while driving. There are a number of little electrical pumps and things that buzz on hybrid cars at different times and I'd never tried to understand what was what, until we got the CEL for the brake booster. It's the issue described in the TSB and covered for certain cars during certain time periods, ours was unfortunately almost a year past the expiration of the TSB so we had to pay out of pocket. Your 2014 may be at the very end of the coverage period now, but you can't claim the extended warranty pre-emptively: You need to have the specific CEL codes and it needs to be tested by the dealer. But apparently Hybrid Pit has rebuilt ones they'll sell you for only $600!

Good info, thanks. You're much closer than I am, but it's still only around 350 miles away and would be my cheapest and quickest option - I'll call them today!

 

Cool, thanks! Like @Mendel Leisk I'm wondering why they revised it and if it's worth chasing down, but Toyota's very unlikely to say. FWIW, when I did some EGR work a few months ago, I used one of the many PDFs that Mendel has linked in various threads, and tested the resistance between the several contacts it mentioned, mine were all very close to the 20ohms that it listed as the reference, so I didn't do further testing. I really wanted to pull off those impossible Phillips screws with my hammer-driven impact screwdriver to see how many springs would shoot parts across the garage and get lost, and/or figure out how much voltage to apply to which contacts so I could watch the valve open and shut. I had to remind myself I'm not doing a teardown for my engineering curiosity, and just want a working car!

Oh, of course. You got that pile from lots of previous work and can take the time to soak them clean so they're ready. I only had the one, so I used the day-plus of soaking parts to catch up on the rest of my life and came back to put things back together when it was clean.

Oh, I misunderstood, this makes more sense. You ship them your busted one, they recondition it and ship it back, and you (or the shop that pulled it) can put it back in. Still, I would have done that if I'd known - it's a pain to share our old gas-guzzling Honda Pilot, but not $4k of pain!

 

I talked to a guy at the Gasket Masters in Manteca CA today. I said " I have a 2013 Toyota Prius V, the wagon - " and he said "you've got a blown head gasket" before I could finish!

He said they do over a thousand of these every year, it usually takes 4-5 hours since they're super set up, $2150 total out the door. I wondered if driving it another 350 miles to get there would damage it. He asked several questions about the history of it knocking and the CEL on, I explained both times it happened, around two months and 4k miles apart, each time we drove it under 100 miles after it started knocking and then the CEL came on. He said not to worry about the time between when it wasn't knocking, even though the HG was still leaking (which I know because the coolant dropped slowly during that time) it wasn't causing any other problems until it started knocking again. I just have to be sure the coolant never gets low, and freeway driving without the stop-start won't make it worse.

That makes sense to me, since it's using a very small amount of coolant now, and the primary danger here is a bent rod when MG1 forces the engine to turn over with too much uncompressible liquid in a cylinder and bends a rod (unlike a traditional starter that couldn't turn the engine over), as they note on their website, and they measure piston height before putting it back together to verify the rods.

So, I came in here thinking I might spend around $2k to get a rebuilt engine (or less to get a used engine) and then lots of of my time doing the engine swap myself, and now I'm thinking this is my best option. Sure, it's still the same 11yo engine with 130k, but I only need to have a grounded expectation that it'll get me around 5 years and past 200k or so like I hope the rest of the car will, and that's what this looks like. It'll take most of two days for me to drive there and back, but I can swing that much easier than the $5670 my local independent shop quoted, or $2k plus around a week of my "spare time" working in my garage to swap an engine.

I can probably do this next week, but it may be ten days before my schedule allows. In that time, please pour some cold water on this idea if you have any! Bad experiences with Gasket Masters? HG replaced by a shop that failed again in less than 5 years? Money pit that keeps throwing these expensive problems at you? With Toyota in general and a shop like Gasket Masters in particular, I have to "trust but verify" and this forum is the only place I know to get straight answers from people who know - thanks!

 

Interesting, I read the TSB and it makes sense that if the EGR valve is stuck a bit open, it could cause a rattle and rough running at cold startup. The TSB was published in 2016 and only mentions 2012 and earlier models, my 2013 should be unaffected. My EGR valve was fully closed when I had it off and cleaned it, and my cold rattle is the usual misfire P0301, not the P0401, plus I have hydrocarbons in the coolant!

Still, I'm also suspicious about the root cause of these HG failures, and it's interesting that early on the forums were buzzing about the cold soak rattle from a stuck EGR valve. I like Mendel's theory about the partly-clogged EGR passages inside the intake (worst on cylinder 1, as mine was, but still had some flow) leading to higher local temps in cylinder 1, which could cause a bit of expansion warping without raising the overall coolant temp enough to overheat in general. Even if those effects are small, they could stress the aluminum over time, and severe driving (we live in the mountains, I sometimes keep the pedal on the floor for a whole minute uphill) could create enough of a local hotspot to make a pin-prick in the HG, which would very slowly produce the type of failure that's common.

But this is all informed speculation AFAIK, I haven't seen much data to back up any theories, and there are other plausible causes. I used to be much more connected to gearheads who own or work in auto shops, and remember them forming all kinds of very plausible theories like this for common failures. In the end I just want a car that works, but along the way I have to wonder why it doesn't!

 

I think you're generally right on this point, although I do still see lots of Gen3 Prii on the roads. We'd have to look at yearly registrations compared to initial sales numbers, for every car, to know whether they're really going to the junkyard at higher rates than others to know for sure. But since these cars usually develop HG problems long after they're out of warranty, usually on their second or third owner, Toyota can wash their hands and ignore the problem. There's no standing for a lawsuit over expectations of longevity, or the American carmakers would have long since been sued out of existence.

I don't feel ripped off and never expect any car to make it to 300k (although I have taken a few cars past that), but I do still hope this one will get me to 200k without another big expense, as many Japanese cars have for me. It's always a roll of the dice with anything out of warranty, which is why I've learned to do much of my own work - I can't afford to drive cars that are still under warranty. Even after dumping around $6k of repairs into this car (could have been much less if I'd posted here about the brake booster!) I still have a reasonable hope to drive a comfortable, spacious 40mpg car for around 8 years and 100k miles. My total cost of ownership should still be far lower than someone who buys a new car and sells it before the warranty expires, so I'm disappointed in this car but still beating average cost of car ownership.

 

Thanks, that sounds like many of their reviews and several forum posts here. The 1-year warranty should be long enough for problems to pop up if they were a little careless in their speed, which is my only real concern - can they really do it in 4 hours without cutting corners? I'm planning to drive there tomorrow and have the work done Thursday, I'll report my experience here.

I thoroughly cleaned the whole EGR system (including the little passages in the intake manifold) in June when I did much of the normal 90k/120k maintenance, so I don't need that done for another year or two, and will keep up with it in hopes that it helps prevent another HG failure.

I've heard many quotes in that ballpark, and KBB values my car at around $9,000, so "half the car's value" is a reasonable thing to say. If the battery fails me, I don't plan to get a new one from the dealer and will either do my own disassembly and test/replace each cell (as I've done with power tool batteries), or get a refurbished one from a place that does the same. Or those Sodium Power replacements for around $1500 or something, but either way I'm not too worried about that.

 

Anyone who isn't hanging out on these forums, or lives in an area with only one or two dealerships within driving distance, or isn't comfortable with refurbished or third-party options. AKA over 90% of car owners. Just because other options exist doesn't mean that people know about them or are willing to take them.

I did a version of this when our brake booster failed around 6 months ago. I didn't spend a week shuttling the car around to pay 5 independent shops to tell me the same thing, but I did spend a week reading dozens of threads here (for free in my spare time), and I got quotes from the one dealership in driving distance and the one independent shop in our small town. They had the same story about the part being matched to your VIN (which these forums corroborated) and the same price. I didn't see that Hybrid Pit will apparently take your old brake booster, recondition it with the right seals, and ship it back to you (with the same ECU so it gets around the VIN matching problem) or I would have done that. But only because I'm in the 5% or less of car owners who tend to work on our cars before considering a mechanic, and I'm comfortable with a bit of risk in that area - I can't imagine convincing any of my friends or family to do that no matter how I preach.

You may find a few ears here when you preach your thrifty refurb/DIY message, but even in this crowd most people are here because we just want the car to work without extra hassle or expense. Dealerships are doing a brisk business in repairs (many enough that they take a loss on new car sales) for good reasons, and if you think you can get everyone on Nexpower Sodium batteries or whatever, you should go into business with them and see how it goes.

 

OK, I just checked into the cheap hotel right across the street from Gasket Masters in Manteca. I'm glad my wife isn't with me to note how old and mediocre this place is, but it'll be fine for a night. I'll roll the car across the street for them to work their incredibly fast (and hopefully good) magic first thing in the morning.

The car had been sitting in the garage for almost two weeks before I drove it today, and I listened carefully as it started - very smooth, no misfire! But it did rattle/knock several times at stoplights and some stop-and-go traffic in the first 15 minutes before I got going on the freeway. The coolant reservoir was an inch below the L mark this morning; I'd noticed it dropping slowly since I'd done some work in June, but not that low. I filled it up to almost running out the overflow before I left, and just checked again - it dropped more than an inch during the drive here. Otherwise it performed exactly as usual, reminding me how much I like this car. It's nice to have it here with no further damage - driving 350 miles on a blown head gasket today felt like rolling the dice a bit.

I'll make a new thread when I get home with my report on the work, since this chapter where I figure out what to do is ending tonight. Thanks everyone for your input, I would literally not be here in Manteca without you!