Another blown head gasket.

I had a blown head gasket on my 2012, ended up having to have the dealer replace the engine due to block and head warping.

 

How many miles? Was the EGR cooler/intake manifold ever cleaned?
I have the same year/model @183K with no head gasket issues to date.

 

I haven't been around, either.

Been having the same symptoms!

I have a 2012 Toyota Prius v Five, with 140K miles on it. Nice car so far, however, it has seemingly always had a problem with rough start of the gasoline engine whenever it's cold and it's been sitting overnight.

Now, it recently got much worse, so I took it into the dealer. It's a damaged head gasket. They used a borescope and confirmed that coolant was leaking into the combustion area. That's obviously a bad thing, and it's a huge amount of labor to replace. They quoted me a price of $4400 which is pretty huge, even estimating as much as $5200 originally. This price also includes a new water pump, new spark plugs, and machining of the cylinders as necessary to fit the new head gasket in. Seems like a lot of work! I'm in San Jose, California, an area that has a high cost of labor, so that's it as well.

I've done all the recommended service intervals for the Prius. The only other major thing it's had was a failure of the controller board of the electric inverter, which would have been a $3000 repair but by good luck it was covered by Toyota extended warranty all the way out to 115K miles! It was a soft recall, I think, on that one particular part, so I got lucky there. Other than a few flat tires which were my fault (I missed avoiding obstacles), it's been trouble-free, other than these. Still, I feel disappointed about this head gasket, as it feels like it should have lasted longer before developing such a major problem as this.

I'm thinking the best thing to do is not spend the money on this repair, and instead apply it to a down payment on a new Subaru Forester I've had my eye on....

 

@danlatu, the voice crying in the wilderness, is preaching Oil Catch Can to prevent this.

 

This doesn't sound due to knocking/misfiring. Probably an overheated engine. A very costly repair if so.

 

If you dont mind telling me, how much did it cost to replace the engine?

 

Around 7k. Sorry for the late reply.

SM-G955U ?

 

I have a 2012 Prius v. 179k miles. I took it in to dealer end of January (now May) with the cold start shudder issue. They did a software update as a 'place to start' and hoped that would fix it. It didn't and now, 4 months later, they are saying I have a blown head gasket and need to replace the engine (7k) or trade it in with a value of $500. The software update they said they did was TSB 0027-16, but they did not do the repairs associated with this TSB, replacement of the EGR valve and modification of the wiring harness, just the software update.

Can anyone tell me if TSB was properly completed, would it have prevented the head gasket from failing? Thank you for any insights you may offer.

 

Some techs have "claimed" that the updated software will reduce/prevent the knocking but I am doubtful. Mine was updated though.

And no, the software update has no relation to the head gasket failure. The head gasket failures are common these engines and while there is speculation on what can be done to prevent it, my opinion is that it will fail regardless of what you try to do.

If they are quoting 7K for a new short block and reusing the original cylinder head, that is about right. Hopefully the 7K quote is not for a used engine.

 

They did the software update only but the TSB states the EGR valve and wiring modification should also be completed at the same time, and they did not do that. The quote is for a used engine with 60k miles on it.

 

It doesn’t make sense to spend money on the EGR at this point. If the engine does not consume oil and can be salvaged, find someone to replace the head gasket. I would expect an independent shop to charge around $3K.

$7k for a used engine is a lousy deal.

 

Thank you. Appreciate the advice.

 

So here is my sad head gasket story...I have a 2010 Prius V with 177,000 miles. I have never had any problems with the car and it has never overheated. I started having cold start knocking and knocking when the engine would kick in after idoling, which eventually let to a check engine light. I took the car in for a diagnostic and had the misfire codes, p301,302,304 I had all spark plugs changed, all 4 coils replaced and did a fuel system clean. After all of this the car seemed to run better but still got a cold start knocking and engine light 2 days later. After taking it back today, the mechanic put 150 psi air through the gasket and got bubbles in the coolant and was told this was definitely due to a blown head gasket. Any thoughts on how to move forward?