HELP! No Acceleration, horrible shaking and sudden smell of rotten eggs... bad gas???

It’s happening out here in NorCal too.

We’ll all need cat converter chastity belts soon.

 

It's off topic a bit but...
A GPS locator would be a cool thing for the problem.
As soon as the thieves know the GPS is transmitting the location over any free WiFi hotspot it goes past, they would think more than twice about stealing them.
An enterprising person could set up a central database, you register your car, the database gets the info, alerts the cops and the thieves are found. Best if the GPS can be very well sealed so they can't just rip it off the unit.
Of course, there may be an app already for GPS location devices. Dog collars and such.

Speaking of which though, would a second hand cat from a scrapyard be an idea for the original poster? (from a front end write off), Get that ironed out, at least temporarily and then see into the engine gunking.

 

The series of events leads me to believe that the issue is fuel related, but when troubleshooting misfires, it is probably better to start with the basics.

If you feel ambitious and want to troubleshoot this yourself, you can swap injectors for #3 and #4 to #1/#2 and see if your misfires follow. The injectors are not difficult to access on this engine.

 

Aren't we complicating the simple? Or Simplifying the complicated? Or...

To me....

Those are the two money quotes about the problem.
IMO, the sudden smell of rotten eggs, is catalytic converter. Unless you actually have rotten eggs in your vehicle.
Couple that with the admission that the vehicles tank had been run as low as it ever had been run in it's lifetime.

All the things brought up...it could be..and may need investigating. But to me the "surest" bet is a problem with the catalytic converter.
If there was gunk in the fuel? You may have other problems now, that "reached" the converter.

But I'd bet, that unfortunately it's NOT as simple as loose gas cap.
But conversely, it may NOT be as complicated as some of the scenario's brought up by all the codes.

Once you have a failed converter and possibly a clogged or messed up fuel system, the vehicle is going to log a lot of codes as a result.

It's up to the OP how much of DIY project they want to make it be. If that's what you do? And you have the time, tools and desire? Continue. But....

For myself? This would be an issue that if I had the money, I'd throw it at it. Then you exit the "detective" game, and hopefully if you have a competent and honest mechanic, simply fix exactly what needs to be fixed. ( Yeah, that's a big IF ) And the ONLY thing I'm willing to bet on, over the internet, is that I think a new Catalytic Converter will be needed.
The rest becomes speculation and can snowball into a lot of things that may or may not need to be done. And IMO once the Catalytic Converter has failed to the point where it's affecting how the engine is running, the codes logged could be misleading.
Everything becomes a Chicken or Rotten Egg first scenario.

Good Luck, whatever direction resolution takes you in.
I'd be curious ultimately as to what it takes to resolve the problem in totality.

 

I got called out on posting an “OT” braking issue was that was still related to the topic braking. If the quote I’m replying to isn’t off topic then the 5 seconds rule applies

 

Non issue - almost certainly unrelated.

I'm on my second company Prius.
Both 2010's, and neither one of them has ever had gas put into the tank before DTE=0 unless somebody else did it.
So I have over 150,000 miles in type - and so far I have not had a fuel related problem in my G3.

My "gunk in the gas tank" theory goes something like this:

Gas is a fairly light fluid.
That's sort of the whole point.
It's lighter than water, diesel fuel, oil, dirt, mud, sand, or anything else that you can think of that might find its way into your fuel tank.
However (comma!)
It's still a fluid.
That means you have to pump it out of your fuel tank, and this is pretty much done from the bottom of the tank - which is where all of the water, diesel fuel, oil, dirt, mud, sand, or anything else that you can think of that might find its way into your fuel tank is ALREADY hanging out.
Fuel tanks are usually constructed in such a way as to allow for things to settle in an area below the pickup line (the car kind, not the bar kind) and they have a fuel filter to keep the big hunks and chunks from fodding out your injectors.

So.
Gunk in the FUEL TANK?

Not much of a thing.

Gunk in the catalytic converter?
That's a different story.
Methinks that you live on free soil (ish.)
Michigan currently does not require automobile or truck emissions testing despite "a running battle with federal regulators over air quality ......for years."

Sometimes this manifests itself in people that maintain a closed hood maintenance philosophy and never check their oil level.
In a car with a a very small oil sump and a 10,000 mile oil change interval, this can lead to your car experimenting with drinking and smoking.
Almost all teenagers do, and you are rolling a 2010 - which is now entering those fragile pre-teen years, and yes.
It's always the parents fault.

There's also things like the EGR circuit to consider.

Advice:
1. If you're going to fix the car, then you have to fix the car or somebody else has to.
I'd be tempted to limp/tow it to a muffler shop AFTER looking under the car for damage to the exhaust system and verifying that you have positive flow from the tail-pipe. After all - as Eddie Murphy might be wont to say, you may have fallen for the old "banana in the tailpipe trick" - although most often these days it's either a tuber or wadded paper.
So....look for that.
If most of us are right, then you're going to be replacing the cat or selling the car soon anyway, and a muffler shop will be a heckuva lot cheaper than a dealer.

Just make sure that the muffler shop isn't too far away - BECAUSE......

2. There's very significant chance that you're about to join the G3 head gasket club.
That's the 'shake, rattle, roll' talking.
Start reading up on that. You can do an emergency cleaning of the EGR cooler if you're a DIY kinda person - or you can farm this out to an independent mechanic.
Me?
I'd watch a video and use oven cleaner to do a quick-clean just as a troubleshooting step - BEFORE going to the muffler place BUT I'm more of a DIY kinda guy.


Good Luck!
Get back with us on how it winds up.

 

Yeah.

The dues are kinda high.

Good Luck with the mechanic. I'm liking what they said about the low fuel level...
A crook would have stoked your fears rather than trying to ease them.

1. Set your iPhone to remind you once a month to check your oil.

2. While you're waiting for your car to get back watch a video about EGR cleaning. If you do not have time to DIY, it will give you more of an idea of what's involved so that you can judge whether or not a mechanic's quote for this work is reasonable.
Trust but verify.

If your wrench is good than he or she is going to be BUSY, so if your cat did go bad I'd make it a very high priority to find out WHY this happened and arrange to get that problem fixed.

It's almost always a symptom....



Good Luck!

 

We were walking the Shiba 'round the block last night, and all of a sudden, it was : "what IS that smell??". It was somewhere between burnt rubber and the aforementioned rotten eggs. And my wife remarked the parked car we'd just walked by seemed to be radiating heat.

There's mention of CAT's being contaminated with coolant here:

https://www.cars.com/articles/what-are-common-catalytic-converter-problems-1420663031608/

Which maybe brings it back to the clogging EGR, consequential overheating, and head gasket failure.

 

This is a tangent, I do not mean to hijack the thread. You would think that Toyota would come up with software to monitor the EGR symptoms. A check engine light with the appropriate code to replace the EGR valve and cooler would be a real money maker for stealerships.

And if the EGR is failing, what about the NOx emissions? SMOG checks today only verify if the computer is working without errors. Does anyone put these cars on a dynamometer anymore?

 

There is a trouble code for insufficient EGR flow, but the consensus seems to be when it comes on, you're already near-knackered. Kind of like the low engine oil pressure warning.

And EGR clogging is pretty much a 3rd gen fact-of-life. It's interesting when the fourth gen came out, in the white papers and brochures, beside the usual droning on about infotainment features, there's mention of revised EGR.

Addendum: Ok managed to find one mention, in 2016 Press Release, page 14:



(Full document attached)

 

Mine had the same symptoms. Turns out it was a bad ignition coil. Swapped it out and it smoothed right out.

 

Still, 135K miles, and assuming you haven't got 'round to it: I would get on the EGR and intake manifold cleaning, and consider Oil Catch Can install.

The simplest way to see where you're at, is to check the degree of carbon build up in the EGR pipe, a stainless steel connecting pipe between the EGR valve and intake manifold. Watch @NutzAboutBolts video #16 here:

Nutz About Bolts Prius Maintenance Videos | PriusChat

Two or three other videos linked there too, for the full cleaning of the intake manifold, full EGR clean, and Oil Catch Can install.

Good thread:

EGR & Intake Manifold Clean Results | PriusChat

Another:

Oil Catch Can, Eliminate that knock! | PriusChat

Some tools worth having:

E8 Torx socket (mandatory)
E6 Torx socket (optional, but good to have, to remove the throttle body studs from intake manifold)
3/8" ratchet wrench, regular and long handle, flex head, you can never have enough
1/4" ratchet wrench, or 3/8" to 1/4" reducer
Ratchet extensions: you can never have enough
Long needle nose piers, straight and bent tip
Ratcheting 12mm box wrench (optional, but makes disconnection of the EGR cooler from exhaust easier)
Torque wrench (3/8" and 1/4" both good to have)
Floor jack and safety stands (or ramps): basically some method to raise front, if you need to take underpanel off, which you may need to, both for access and to recover dropped items.

 

Glad you're on the road again!

 

More than likely, if one coil is bad, the others are soon to follow.
Same with plugs. So it was the best idea to replace all, since he was there anyways.
And the parts are cheaper than the labor when/if another one went bad in the near future.....

A little more expensive now, but it would be a lot more later...

 

I would hope it would be a NEW EGR system, rather than a used one.

 

That's what I was going to suggest too. Had the same problem with my Gen-2 a few years ago. Bad coil wasn't firing, so unburned fuel from that cylinder was being fed through the exhaust, to the cat converter, causing the smell. Caused the drive-ability problems you described and made a hell of a racket in the engine. All from a bad coil.
Good diagnostic job by your mechanic!