First time preventative maintenance

No one mentioned it, but you've got to do quite a bit of disassembly (windshield cowl/tray under the wipers) before you can even get to the sparkplugs.

SM-G781V ?

 

You seemed to have missed the free and easier to use owners manual I pointed out.

No one has a factory repair manual other than pieces captured as pdfs from Toyota's TIS site.

 

see video 13 here:

Nutz About Bolts Prius Maintenance Videos | PriusChat

^ one quibble: he slathers plug threads with ant-sieze and advocates 20 ft lbs torque. Toyota Repair Manual says 15, and no mention of lube, so presumably clean/dry threads.

yeah, an astounding amount of disassemble required, just because the coils bump the wiper cowl underside an inch or two before they can be extracted. Not Toyotas finest engineering.

attached repair manual excerpt has spark plug info. Last page, with plug torque, is a thousand pages or so away from the rest.

Plug spec is shown in owners manual, except that spec has been superseded by Toyota, to a slightly hotter plug (“20” designation revised to “16”). I posted that updated Denso plug spec up the page, plus it’s Toyota part no (in post 14).

you’ll need a 14 mm (or 9/16”) socket. If it’s got rubber inset to grip plug, I’d recommend to tape socket to extension securely, to avoid it pulling off after new plug install.

 

I won't invest on anything but oil change first on the first 1 year/5k miles and check if everything is fine, the car does not burn oil, and everything works. After that:
1. Clean the EGR and intake manifolds, don't waste time too muchon trying to shining up the EGR cooler
2. Change the engine coolant with genuine Toyota SLLC if it has not been replaced before
3. Change the transmission fluid at the same time
4. Change the spark plugs at 240k miles
That's all, hopefully no problem before reaching no. 4.

 

One thing, the colloquial name "cooler" is not for naught: if it's purpose was solely to flow exhaust gasses, it wouldn't have the internal raidator. If that radiator has a patina of carbon, it may still have "sufficient" flow, but it's cooling ability is hampered. Several hour-long soaks with a concentrated solution of oxi-clean (or lye solution if oxi is inusufficent) can get it like-new clean, and restore it's cooling efficacy.

For expeidience when doing EGR cleaning, get the EGR cooler soaking started first, then go onto cleaning of the EGR valve, the pipe twixt EGR valve and intake manifold, the intake manifold (pay special attention to the EGR passages at each port), and the intake ports on the head. Maybe set an hour timer for rinse-and-repeat of the EGR cooler.

 

I soaked the EGR cooler in a brake cleaner solution by plugging both side holes. I have a used cooler for spare and reduced down time. I also have used intake manifolds and EGR valves. It costs less than $100 but can reduce the down time by hours.

 

I tried about 12 hours of brake cleaner soak, then gave up on that. A water-based, caustic cleaner (Oxi or lye solution) is much better.

 

That's true,I don't see much difference after soaking it with brake cleaner. It remove sludge and oily things well. I think hard carbon deposit best cleaner is always hot steam water+dish soap.

 

Removing the wiper assembly is the easy part and certainly changes an impossible egr cooler removal job to simply ridiculous.

You have to know how to remove it to get to the spark plugs as well. Might want to simply pull the plugs and inspect while you are bloody and greasy anyway.

I have been trying to get our egr fanatic and parts illustrator for a living guy Mendel to whip up some decent exploded views with tools.

 

You are not going to get to the cooler with the wiper assembly still in place.
Just duck-duck-go search for spark plug removal on the Prius and they will show you
how to remove it. Fairely simple and quick. A lot of bolts, that's all.
Getting the wire harness plastic holders out is the biggest pain.
Mark with painters tape where the wiper blades are before removing them so you know
where to reinstall them.
That bolt is NOT that hard to do if you have a small 1/4 inch ratchet.
oxi will take forever to work and multiple water changes to get it clean.
Pressure washer and oven clean is the best way to clean it.

 

@Raytheeagle said he did one EGR cleaning without wiper/cowl removal, resolved to not go that route again.

@rjparker im not sure a blow-by-blow narrative would be helpful. It’s somewhat akin to reading a completely typed out speech word-for-word, versus just referring to cue cards. The latter is better I think.

 

Some challenges aren't required to repeat.

Wiper Cowling removal is easy enough.

Clean the cooler.

 

If the oil change was recent then just reset the maintenance light. It will come back as a temporary alert 4500 miles later and will stay on at 5000 miles.

Oil changes are not to ensure there is plenty of oil. They are to ensure your engine has the lubrication and cleaning benefits of new oil while removing contaminates circulating in the old oil or captured by the filter.

If the oil level goes down between changes (certainly if it's close to the low dipstick mark), you should add oil (top it off). These engines usually don't burn any observable oil when their miles are under 125k but are known oil burners at higher miles. Sometimes so bad they could burn ALL the oil in 5,000 miles.

 

Does the oil look clean? Hopefully, they actually DID the oil change.
If you are not sure, or aren't comfortable about it, change the oil and filter.
Then set the trip meter to "A", shut the car off, press and hold the mph/kph button
to the left of the radio and press the START button twice. You don't have to hold the
brake pedal for this. The display will say it's resetting and after about 5 seconds it
will say it's reset.

??? The rear window defogger will not heat the car. It will only heat the window up to
clear it. There are more than 2 things that could be wrong. But the easiest thing to do
is to actually CHECK the fuse.
If it is blown, you can replace it with a fuse of the correct size. If it blows again, quickly,
then something is shorted. If it still doesn't work, perhaps the wires could be chewed,
or burnt, or broken. You can use a volt meter and see if you get 12 volts at the terminals.
Of course one of the elements could be broken.

 

If you're handy and have the tools, roughly in order, I would:

• Drain oil. Go ahead and fully remove the engine underbody cover while you're down there.
• Drain engine and inverter coolant, and while empty:
  • Remove windshield wiper assembly (get used to doing this; mind the windshield glass)
  • Remove air intake/air box
  • Remove intake manifold
  • Remove throttle body
  • Replace spark plugs (buy from dealer)
  • Replace PCV valve (literally ten bucks and ten minutes once you're this deep)
  • Replace water pump (expensive part, but at 172k, it could fail tomorrow and it's literally right there once you remove the intake manifold)
  • Clean throttle body (make sure you do this right, look up videos on how to properly clean a throttle body)
    
  • Clean and/or replace intake manifold
  • Clean EGR pipe
  • Clean and/or replace EGR valve. You can buy an EGR valve kit with all the gaskets for $150ish
  • Clean ERG cooler.
  • Optional: oil catch can. You'll absolutely want to do this while a bunch of this stuff is removed; it's a lot easier.
• Put it all back together
• Change engine and cabin air filters
• Clean MAF sensor
• Inspect brake pads and rotors; replace pads if low, replace rotors if you can feel any edges/warping or see anything weird
• Flush brake fluid
• Check for worn struts, shocks, and bushings. Replace as necessary.
• Inspect 12v battery; replace if old or tests poorly
• Inspect and clean fan for hybrid system, and especially so if there's evidence of a dog in the vehicle
• Inspect tires; replace as necessary. Inflate tires.
• Inspect spare tire; inflate as well.
• Replace wipers
• Optional: new headlights, replace running lights with LEDs, etc.
• Optional: Update cabin bulbs to LED (I view this as a safety/reliability thing; it's a lot more difficult to strand yourself if you accidentally leave a light on. I frequently head out to BF nowhere, so this is super important to me)
• Optional: get a portable tool set
• Optional: get a portable air compressor/battery jumper

That's probably the checklist I'd go through. From here on out, I'd do 5k oil changes and plan on ripping the whole thing down every 50k miles or so.