PPI on 2012 v two showed burning oil and a leaky timing cover gasket. Are these reasonable fixes?

These cars can and do burn a lot of oil due to poorly engineered pistons and rings which were upgraded mid 2014. This causes massive carbon buildup and is a leading factor causing blown head gaskets.

The timing chain gasket is also common leak point but is not worth more than $1200 to fix. Which many can do without pulling the engine.

However the mechanic who said replace the engine was very honest. But only with a properly rebuilt engine. With the right rebuilder and installer it could be done for $4000.

But wait! There is more! The brake by wire system fails! $2500 for that alone. The egr cooler and valve clogs. $1000.

Run, don’t walk away. A used gen3 hybrid is a poor car and will not save you money.

 

If you want reliability and low cost of ownership on a budget stay away from Prius hatchbacks until 2016 when gen4 was introduced.

All Prius v wagons from 2012-17 have issues since they are all gen3. The piston oil burning issue was reengineered by the 2015-17 v wagons.

The lowest cost of ownership will be non-hybrid, especially on a tight budget. If you can afford it buy new for best value these days. In Toyota hybrids that would be a Rav4 or Corolla hybrid.

 

Yeah OMG that's a new high, or is it low? It is totally unnecessary to remove the engine for this.

With 148K odds are very good the head gasket is on the way out.

 

How much are the asking for the car? At some price its worth taking a gamble and doing nothing but keep the oil topped.

 

It appears these highly complex cars were designed with a service life of 10 yrs/150,000 miles.

The used car market is still crazy so sellers can get far more than the real objective,rational worth of their cars from desperate buyers.

Unless you want a project car, this vehicle will likely cost you a lot in repairs in the relatively near future with various reasonably predictable issues. Based on that, and the fact that the sellers have already used the design service life, it's possibly worth a gamble at $2000. But hopeful buyers will probably pay much more. Good luck.

 

Or Toyota’s engineers erred, didn’t appreciate either:

1. the low-tension piston rings’ propensity to carbon-clog, jam and start allowing copious oil consumption.

2. the EGR circuit’s propensity to (likewise) carbon-clog, leading to uneven hot spots, head gasket failure.

First I’d verify the severity of the (timing chain cover) leak. You can look down the passenger end of the engine with a light, get some idea. For a better view, remove passenger side wheel, plus a few fasteners on the plastic wheel well liner, and flex out the liner enough to see bottom of timing chain cover and the pulley at end of crank shaft.

There’s a chance too the leak is in-fact from timing belt tensioner mechanism, or the the oil pressure sensor, all nearby.

that said, if timing belt cover does have a serious leak, you can remove and reseal it with engine in place. Aforementioned pulley needs to come off (an impact is handy for this), plus an engine mount, water pump (more succinctly engine coolant pump), AC compressor needs to be unbolted and lifted out of the way (without coolant lines disconnected), and other sundry disconnections.

Then the timing cover can be unbolted and and pried off. It’s sealed with form-in-place gasket. You need to clean all mating surfaces, apply fresh FIP gasket in specific zones (North American DIY’rs have been using non-spec Permatex Ultra Black, which has mercifully longer cure time), and expediently reinstall cover, and reinstall/torque myriad bolts (around 25).

Then carry on reinstalling, torquing, topping up coolant and so on.

Google “Mr B Prius head gasket”, for one very illustrative YouTube how-to.

Gasket Masters also have head gasket replacement videos, some very illustrative, some just run-on fly-on-the-wall. And some some short ones, with tips.

last link in my signature is complete engine section of Repair Manual, has info, torque specs etcetera. On a phone turn it landscape to see signature.

Bear in mind the head gasket may also be failing, and this timing chain reseal may just be part of that larger job:

Head gasket may well be failing. Some unscrupulous sellers undoubtedly add stop-leak product to engine coolant, to temporarily reseal it. Or it may still be “intact” but about to fail, due (in my unverified opinion) to protracted neglect of aforementioned carbon build-up in EGR circuit.

for a DIY’r the simplest test is likely to pressurize the engine coolant system, and boroscope inspect the combustion chambers, looking for tears of coolant seeping past head gasket, and/or exceptionally clean piston heads (due to coolant “steam cleaning”). These symptoms may be partially masked, by aforementioned stop-leak products.

148k IS getting into the failure zone, and you see a lot of gen 3 (and similar v’s) for sale around those miles. Begs the question: why would anyone want to buy a used gen 3, especially anything over 100k? If you still want to gamble, I would present seller with what you’ve uncovered so far, make low-ball offer.