2001 shuttering to start, won't move in drive.

These kinds of delays happen to lifelong mechanics as well.
The good thing is that the only person waiting for resolution is you.

It's a bigger challenge when these things happen and I need to explain to a customer that I need their car a few days beyond the day I planned to return their car.

 

Got comprehensive insurance fire/theft?

 

I understand that you previously tried to swap the spark igniters and the DTC did not move from one cylinder to another. Maybe you can swap the iridium spark plugs between cylinder 1 and 2 and see what happens.

If your swapping does not find a problem with the spark igniters and spark plugs, and you've already replaced the fuel injectors, I would suggest you have a cylinder leak down test performed to see if the engine has a fundamental problem such as low compression due to leaking valves or worn piston rings.

I do not believe that P0240 is a valid Prius DTC. P0420 would be valid, and that points to a failed catalytic converter.

 

Just to make sure I understand where things stand now....

The injectors that are now in your car are the ones I sent, but reinstalled by a mechanic using new O rings after the first effort you described in post #93, in which some of them may have been physically deformed?

Did the mechanic perform any tests on these before reinstalling them for you?

The original injectors that you took out of the car, those are on their way to Rich for performance testing?

It sounds like the car is still misfiring, which puts us in a diagnostically vague situation.

If the car were now running like a top, LF1 coming down into a -5 to +5 range, no misfire codes, and so on, we would be happy because we would know both that the original problem must have been injector-related and that the injectors now in the car are still ok despite the bit of squashing in that first attempt.

However, since that's not the outcome we got, all we know is that either the original problem was not injector-related, or the injectors now in the car are not still ok. (Curse you, Augustus De Morgan!)

In any case, there are still other non-injector avenues that others have suggested and it probably makes sense to pursue those. When Rich's test results on your old injectors are available, that will help with the judgment of whether they were part of the problem or not, but we won't have those for a week or so.

As long as there are still symptoms and codes suggestive of misfiring, I would not recommend we "just get back to driving it." Misfiring is known to eventually do in the catalytic converter, and that's an expense you'll be happier to avoid.

... speaking of which, I don't see a P0240 in my manual ... did you mean P0420? that's a catalytic converter trouble code.

-Chap

 

P0420 is catalytic converter. P0440, P0441, P0446 are all related to the evaporative emission control system ... page DI-16 shows the several possible things that could cause that, but one easy one to check is not having the fuel tank cap securely sealed. That gets people surprisingly often.

If it's not that, there could be cracked rubber hoses somewhere in the evap system, or misconnected ones, cracks in the fuel tank or vapor canister, old hardened rubber seals, or various electrical sensor or actuator problems. Evap systems are tricky to diagnose. A proper shop can use very-low-pressure-regulated inert gas to check for leaks, the only safe way to do that. DIY diagnosis opportunities are limited, unless you see an obvious cracked or disconnected hose somewhere, or the fuel tank cap is loose.

Have you double-checked that you reconnected the skinny hose that goes to the air filter box?

It is kind of encouraging to see that there are no misfire codes at the moment. What kind of LF1 readings are you seeing? Have they changed at all since last week?

-Chap

 

I've read this thread a couple of times. I had sort of similar issues last winter - misfires, poor performanc and trouble starting - that started immediately after a major rain storm. Have you filled the tank and/or added fuel conditioner/deicer? After mucking around with my car for a month or more when it started acting up and ruling out most of the items discussed here I came to the conclusion that I had water in the tank or bad fuel. Thought about draining the fuel, but didn't see an easy way of doing that so just kept driving and adding conditioner at each fillup and it got slowly better over a few tanks.

More recently I had a P0172 accompanied by very high LT fuel bank numbers and poor reported fuel economy which was completely solved by replacing th MAF sensor after ruling out a bunch of other stuff. I had cleaned it a couple of times over the last year, but guess it just failed.

Jeff

 

Well, the injector results are in, and they definitely were not the problem. Those might have been brand new, as good as they tested ... scarcely any room for improvement:

I'm sorry that was extra work for CClay for a negative result, but I thank him for being a sport in the cause of building PriusChat knowledge. So far we've seen: my injectors at 204,000 miles: pretty darned good; astrolink's injectors at 165,000 miles: definitely bad, and replacing them solved the problem; CClay's at (what is that, 176,000 miles? tried to read from your video): really, really good.

Annnd, once again I'm in the position of having a great set of restored (hardly needed it!) injectors, for the next person who (might) need them.

-Chap

 

Out of curiousity, have you actually calculated fuel mileage, or is this reported? I ask because I was also considering fuel delivery issues - bad pump or clogged filter - and couldn't see an easy way to measure fuel pressure. This is pure speculation on my part, but I understand that a high fuel trim means that the computer is telling the injectors to deliver more fuel by increasing the length of the injector pulse, and the indicated mileage is based on this. It occurs to me that there must be an assumption of a certain fuel line pressure for this calculation to take place and be correct, since AFAIK the on board systems do not monitor fuel pressure.

I'm thinking that a high reported fuel consumption when the observed fuel consumption is low would be an indication of low fuel pressure. It might take a couple of tanks to smooth out the bladder effect, but throwing this out as a theory...

 

It wouldn't hurt, but it may not make a difference. I have customers who have used aftermarket MAF sensors from local parts stores and the car runs fine.
Again, too bad there isn't someone else local you could just swap a few parts with for trial and error.

 

When you take your car to the Toyota dealer the first thing the mechanic will do is to replace any non-Toyota parts on the basis that they are suspect because of their dubious origin. So if you are serious about getting your car to perform right, you will use only Toyota parts.

 

Solving issues like yours are a challenge. There are times where I've spent a lot of time narrowing down the cause.

While similar patterns of symptoms, the resolution has not always been the same. Sometimes it's the MAF, sometimes the injectors, sometimes the ignitor, etc. Heck one time it was a rubber gasket someone dropped inside the throttle body.
You've gotten good advice so far on this thread.

I thought you did not have any dash lights on, right?

 

p0420 is not good. As you know, it is a catalytic converter code.
There are ways to check the cat.
http://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/cars/TIS/ileaf/04toyrm/04toypdf/04rmsour/2004/04priusf/05/2054m/p0420.pdf

Unless you have the tools, this is a good job for a mechanic with the correct scan tools.

P0420 without any other codes usually points to the cat.
Sometimes can be an older ecu problem. But of course you did not have this problem before.
Any idea what ECU version you have in the car?