Gen 2 Blown Head Gasket; Seal it with Blue Devil?

So I am helping someone with their 2007 Prius that a Shop couldn't diagnose properly. The owner of this car only drove it a month before the pack went down. The car was diagnosed with a failing hybrid battery at a local shop, since you have to wait 3 months to get your car in to Maui's only Toyota Stealership...

When the owners were waiting for a battery to be shipped in, the owners were driving the car around. When the battery arrived in the mail, they took the car back to the shop, & it was shaking and making a lot of clattering noise.

The shop thought the transmission was failing due to the sound the dampener was making. The Car was being driven when it should not have been, i.e. When the traction battery was failing & the master warning light was on. In the tropical heat, The engines 3 way valve blew a glued on cap & dumped most of the coolant.

The car was overheated, & coil # 2 stopped working setting a P0302 misfire code. Swapped out the coil, got it to run smoother & the dampener to stopped clattering... Still it ran rough. I Checked the ECT pid, & the engine temp was 235 & climbing. I Shut it down immediately, & checked the coolant. Way low. Added some & found the failed 3 way valve pictured.

After swapping the 3 way valve so the car would hold coolant, I fired it up again and it steamed from the open radiator cap & tailpipe immediately. I'll work on uploading the video soon. Anyway I didn't even bother with the block test fluid as there are obviously combustion gasses in coolant loop & vice versa.

Any experience trying a product like blue devil in the car before condemning the engine completely?

On island it will cost more to have the head machined & put back on than it would cost to put in a good used engine. These folks are upside down with a used car loan & purchase of a new battery that they cannot return at this point....

 

Just saw the post title, & was hoping to make it a little more relevant.... Maybe a Moderator can help....


I was trying to make the thread title "Gen 2 Blown Head Gasket; Seal it with Blue Devil?" But the error message "enter a valid post" title kept reappearing.

Was in the process of shortening it, when I bumped post & it went through as is. Don't think members will know what it is about from the title...

 

cold startup & vapor coming out of radiator was cool... Engine running smoother than with failed coil, but still not very smooth...

 

Yes, exactly that is a clearer title, & what I had written originally.

I'm thinking I will run the blue Devil product in the motor this weekend to see what happens.

 

Aloha Patrick, thank you for your thoughts on this. Follows my line of thinking. Not much to lose but some time and a little energy, and no guarantee on how long it will last if it does seal.

This Prius has only about 140k mi on it. My 2005 has 190k on the clock, but must have considerably more actual miles, as the combo meter was dead most drive cycles for over a year before I fixed it with some new electrolytic capacitors (not the original type aluminum caps).

It is not all that hard to find a low mileage 1.5L Prius engine on Maui, with a little patience. Unfortunately there is only one salvage yard on Maui, & they generally avoid Prius. You kind of have to grab a salvage or abandoned car at an auction and hope the engine is good. Then part it out your self.

I have a gen 1 engine with the forged internals & only 60k mi on it, sitting on the engine stand. It is my spare engine in the quest for keeping my Prius going for the long haul; Ideally my Seaside Pearl Honu will be going strong well beyond when the odometer quits working at 299,999.....

I know where there is another gen 2 engine in known good running condition, with roughly equivalent mileage; sitting in a car at an independent hybrid & auto shop just waiting to be pulled.

After buying this car and driving it only one month before the pack went down, then the owners wife overheating the car driving it while waiting for the $3k pack to arrive; Then not knowing car was damaged until after the pack was installed & the car sat around about 6 weeks while the shop that put in the battery was trying to assess the transaxle noises caused by the engine misfiring; at this point the owner of this Seaside Pearl 2007 is frustrated & tapped pretty hard financially.

He would rather get back to driving ASAP & start saving for a good used engine, than pay for one right now... He needs to get the car running reliably ASAP so he can get back to earning $$$ driving for Uber. I told him Blue devil is not a permanent solution, but if it seals initially, it may work for anywhere from 1-5 years from what I have seen & heard...

I had a seriously beat up ford ranger 4.0 that Blue Devil had sealed the head in. 4 years & counting, although I sold it, my buddy uses it for chores & fence duty on a ranch. It came with rare factory twin posi-traction diff's, & is great for getting you there & back without tearing up the pasture... Unfortunately those cast iron OHV Ford heads were kind of notorious for cracking, or having poor castings to begin with, & many ford engines including the 5.0 leaked a little combustion gasses to the cooling system even when the engine was new... The dealers kind of just down played the issues until the vehicles were out of warranty. Maybe Blue Devil should be run every few years as a standard procedure on 1990's vintage Fords...

Also a couple of years ago I did try Blue Devil in a 1991 Corolla that had been overheated severely on a small steep mountain backroad that climbed from sea level to over 2,500 ft. The 275k mi. car had recently gotten a new radiator cap after the owner lost the original one, & the increased pressure held in the system under that load had blown an 8 inch long chunk out of the 25 year old degraded plastic radiator top tank. The owner continued on up the mountain, (thinking the gauge must be wrong as they had just filled the water), until the car was so hot it began hesitating & finally shut down due I guess to preignition. After cooling down, it fired back up and was limped back to town.

When it came to me it was running on 2 cylinders and sputtering water. The cylinder head which had been covered in decades worth of caked oil residue was now covered in white ash & 2 spark plugs did not fire. The plugs all had a black ring around the ceramic to metal joint, & #2 & #3 would not spark at all... I Guess the spark plug internal resistors were cooked to death. Anyway, after much desperate imploring for a cheap solution by the owner, I acquiesced to try something new, with no guarantee it would work. Before I could begin I had to put in a radiator & water pump as the bearings were shot. Then I flushed the system, pulled the thermostat and ran the Blue Devil through the car. The water that had been steadily sputtering out the tailpipe slowed & stopped as the head gasket leak sealed. Simultaneously the car began to idle better & better until it was perfectly smooth. The sealant held for over a year, & then the owner ran blue devil in it again, & again it worked. After the car hit 300k I lost track of it, but it had served well, & was ready for vehicular retirement IMHO...

In a gen 2 Prius, I am wondering if the Blue Devil will stop the three way valve from working, or if there will be any other unforeseen issues like in the heater core coolant pump... Guess if no one on PC has tried Blue Devil in a Prius, I'll be the first one come tomorrow...

Planning to cut the center out of the failed thermostat to support the seal as the instructions state the cooling system must be "free flowing", (without thermostat restriction). I Bought an upgraded replacement "safety" thermostat to put in after the Blue Devil process which will lock open if car ever goes over temp again... Going to start it in inspection mode before slowly adding the Blue Devil to keep the engine idling continuously for the whole 50 minutes specified in the instructions.

Wish me luck.

Will post how it works as well as pics from the process.

 

Thank you for changing the title... Hopefully people now will be able to find this post so it can help others in a similar situation in the future...