Mechanical question: does Prius have distribution?

Re: Mechanical question: does Prius gas engine have belt/chain distribution?

Andrei,

The issue is usually about timing belts or chains and whether the engine is an "interfering engine" (will the valves hit the pistons if the timing belt breaks). In a non-interfering engine a broken timing belt only stops the car (no direct damage).

The Prius has a timing chain that typically will last the life of the engine. It will start to make noise to warn you before it fails so we can ignore this maintenance issue in a Prius.

JeffD

 

Neither of those Andrei. It has a distributorless ignition system.

This is one less part you do not have to replace on a Prius.

 

Thanks jden,

I hit submit before I could write in the part about the timing chain and not needing to be serviced.

 

I guess the crankshaft position sensor provides the approximate timing of each cylinder spark, then the computer decides the detailed timing (and duration??) and sends a 12 v pulse to the ignitor in question. Ignitor does the rest.

I had an older Mercedes in which the crank-driven distributor was a chronic low-level oil leak. That can be a small issue atop distributor maintenance already mentioned.

The computer-cleverness of modern vehicles really has reduced routine maint, no doubt about it.

 

You have it pretty much down. My old LS1-based GM cars worked in much the same way. In the ECU are fuel and timing maps. The maps contain "Excel-like" cells with rpm and load on each axis and within the cells are the exact timing numbers that with be applied when a specific RPM and load is reached. This is very simplified but it gives the basic idea.

Here is a quick video that describes

. It is pretty bad/old lol

 

To the OP, if you're talking about how the camshaft works, it has a timing chain.

The Prius timing chain is considered lifetime, there is no set replacement schedule