2014 Prius 1.8L Catastrophic Failure

yes, it's pretty common. the head gasket blows, coolant leaks out and the engine blows. 140k is right on target.
there is a poorly designed egr problem, and poorly programmed coolant water pump speed.

 

How long have you had the car?

The hg symptoms typically start months, sometime a year earlier and typically make a severe rattling sound on occasional startups - usually incorrectly blamed on a sticky egr valve.

A local one man shop has exchanged 100 Prius engines in the last two years.

Shock and Awe

 

yes, the egr cleaning must be done like every 50k miles. Else gets clogged up and cyclinder 1 and cylinder 2 start misfiring from the coolant leak. If caught in time just need to replace head gasket, else whole engine. Will give this warning. Shame, too, because this car's engine is indestructable otherwise. Have a 2014, replaced head gasket, and has run without using drop of oil on its way to 300k miles.

 

Throwing a rod through the oil pan is almost always a consequence of running out of oil.

Unfortunately, it can be tough to work out where the oil went, after the fact.

 

^^^ Yes, OP, did this catastrophic failure happen following an oil change?

If it did, perhaps the o-ring was not installed properly in the oil filter housing? Sometimes the o-ring is not properly seated in the groove AFTER the threads of the oil filter housing, but placed between the threads and the correct groove where the o-ring is supposed to go. If installed improperly, the oil may not leak until the engine is running and the o-ring is exposed to operating pressures and temperatures.

If the drain plug is still present on what is left of the oil pan, is it installed nice and tight, with a crush washer?

SM-G781V ?

 

Have you checked your VIN to see if you’re after the piston/ring revision? The revision was partway through model year 2014. The attachment T-SB-0168... shows the VIN's.

Our '10 has yet to burn any oil, but only 100k kilometers on it lol.

I concur.

 

appreciate the info. guess lucky as my vin# is after the fix. never had such a tight engine. no oil burning while showing no discoloration running the thin original oil zero-20. too bad about the design flaw ruining what could have been virtually an indestructible engine.

 

140k is late in the day to start cleaning the EGR, still I'd get on it right away. See top two links in my signature (on a phone turn it landscape to see signatures).

 

Hybrid Pitstop does this.

I've never done business with them and this is not an endorsement, but they get plenty of talk on this board, check it out.

 

My money’s on the carbon-clogging of the newly designed and insufficiently tested EGR system being the reason the head gasket fails.

 

That seems like an overhaul not a rebuild.

 

They did a free fix on the pistons and rings for those who had excessive oil consumption early on. Many did get that “rebuild” along with a later egr valve update and software to combat egr flow (not clogging) at low rpms. These were never a “recall” by Toyota because a recall requires every car to be fixed. They also did not classify these issues as emissions related which has a longer coverage period.

Holes in the engine are not as common as head gasket failures. There are ways to blow engines by running out of oil, which some fanboys attribute as the cause to those failures. Or they blame egr and intake clogging which are simply results of poor rings.

I asked how long you had the car because some scammers temporarily use head gasket sealers to flip the car.

 

You’re saying the EGR does not clog up on 3rd gens with the revised piston rings? I would disagree.

 

Engine rebuilds are not easy especially on aluminum blocks and heads which tend to warp. Most shops don’t go to the trouble to magnaflux and disassemble the used engine first before replacing wear parts like rings and seals.



So, some have a shop like Hybridpit ship an engine to their local shop or driveway. We had one member blow his head gasket in south Texas who ended up driving his Prius home to Colorado and then to California to get a Hybridpit engine.

A lower cost option (typically $1200) and better than a junkyard engine is a JDM engine from a JDM dealer. These are Prius engines sold and used in Japan and later exported to the US. Big cities usually have a JDM dealer.

Many have good results and rarely do these engines burn oil. They come with almost all the manifolds, pumps and sensors so there is less use of your accessories.


It is not clear why JDM engines would be better other than they are advertised as low miles, typically around 60,000. There is an outside chance they did not use the problematic low tension rings for cars sold in Japan but no one has torn down one of these engines and verified the pistons and as far as I know.

 

The only auto engines I've ever personally rebuilt to a comparable degree were antique VWs. We never sent anything out for magnafluxing; only understand that technique in theory. We did cover the rest of that list (as applicable, anyway)

If Hybrid Pitstop is doing all that I'd be pretty confident in their product. All the same I hope I never need to find out.

I remember reading Pete's thread- glad that worked out for him!

 

This says cylinder boring, not just honing like the other link. The Toyota pistons are options in the other link. I didn’t know Toyota sold over size pistons.
Overhaul involves honing and new rings plus all else checked and corrected, as I always understood it. Rebuilt is boring and new pistons to match, plus all the other, similar to new.
They say new upper and lower camshaft bearings. That’s good, didn’t know this engine has camshaft bearing shells. I checked and it does. In my Toyota truck and also famous engines like the 2uz they run the cams in the aluminum head, no bearing shells. The 1.8 seems like a very good engine.

 

They don’t sell oversized pistons. They do work on other engines.