Blown Head gasket rebuild....@297k

I recall hearing: there's a component that's within the inverter housing, failure-prone, and according to Toyota is not part of the inverter, for warranty purposes.

 

wow cant imagine something big breaking that far from home.

 

This is what oil looked like when i checked. i dont notice the creamy foamy look which is obvious sign of coolant leak in engine oil or does it look like it?
any thought?

 

It looks ok.

Head gaskets failure can be allowing leakages in many different ways, eight IIRC. There's combustion air, coolant, oil and the outside. Any of those can be leaking into any of the other.

Coolant leaking into combustion chamber is often the case, might not show up in crankcase oil, at least not in earlier stages.

On second thought, the first two pics look like there might be something water based contaminating? Not bad though.

 

10-4
head gasket swap next

 

Unplug the wires to the EGR valve and see if it runs better.

 

That would lead to a real puzzler as far as the EGR causation theory, as leaving the valve closed on purpose would be pretty much the same as having the passages super clogged.

 

will try that, whats theory behind that?

 

I don't see how disconnecting the EGR (effectively making it 100% blocked) is going to remedy a failing head gasket.

 

try it

 

The faulty egr gets hung open, causes drivability problems. You guys haven't figured it out yet.

 

I'm glad to see that posted here; now we've got one thread showing that there are two, pretty much diametrically opposed, theories afloat on PriusChat about how the EGR system is leading to Bad Things. In one, the system gets all clogged and there isn't enough EGR to cool the combustion, leading to Bad Things. In the other, "the faulty egr gets hung open" and supplies too much egr (must not be all clogged then), leading to Bad Things.

So sure, it's not impossible that car X is having the first problem and car Y is having the second one. But usually our PriusChat threads go on at length about the one world view or the other, and kind of sidestep the "what evidence tells you that's what's happening?" question.

Off-the-top-of-my-head questions for the "faulty egr gets hung open" version are: if we're saying it's faulty, does somebody know what the fault is? Why does it hang open? And if it was hung open and causing drivability problems while the engine was running, has it still somehow closed itself at the moment you unplug the actuator for a test drive?

 

I don't think a misfire from too much EGR would damage a headgasket. If anything - it would lead to a cooler and longer lasting one due to less combustion?

Pixel XL ?

 

I'm fairly sure it is the choice of oem material is to blame for head gasket to blow.
The warranty is based on alot of material testing.
To make affordable automotive and make money as a manufacture they may have to compromise on how good of parts they use. Then give warranty according to the tests they did to material.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

If egr is stuck open would affect the idea. Probably would make it very tuff to even misfire

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

EGR valve might be stuck open, but at the same time everything would likely be carbon choked.

 

so finally today i started working on car, hoping it wouldnt be head gasket and just egr clogged and i will clean and see the results.
when i opened the egr pipe, water droplettes spilled on my gloves and thats when i realized head gasket has long been gone. the coolant in reservoir tank i filled a few weeks ago had already gone as well. i have taken intake manifold out which is full of oil residue along with carbon buildup which i had cleaned few weeks ago when i changed spark plugs. at the botton of butterfly valve where engine oil i believe circulates was full of creamy oil like how thick cream is on espresso shot which is clear sign of coolant mixing with engine oil.
i successfully used my power tool to remove everything all the way to egr cooler, where i am stuck on just one screw before i can pull it out. the bottom screw which hold cooler to engine block is hidden and blocked by a thick hose, i am struggling with that single one. i even used power tool to take 2 nuts off from back of egr cooler connecting to exhaust manifold. any suggestion to tackle that screw easily?
i am attaching pics of what i found, the egr valve is severly clogged with carbon, egr cooler looks completely clogged by carbon as well.
i did all that work in about lil over 2 hrs.
already took off passenger side wheel and wheel well cover to unplug 3 cables in the back of engine which were stuck frozen and took nme abt 15 minutes to pull off/

 

I found that if I leaned down and had my eyes around where the headlight is, I could actually see the bolt. I doesn't make it any easier to remove, but a ratchet extension and just feeling for when it locks onto the bolt was all I could do. It took some time but once the ratchet is properly on the bolt it wasn't hard to loosen.

 

this is what my engine bay is looking like right now with intake manifold and efr pipe and egr valve removed.


this is what egr valve looks like, to me it seems pretty nasty and fully clogged by carbon


egr cooler look from inside which seems to be fully clogged by carbon and probably is the reason for blown head gasket


intake manifold area looks pretty soaked up in oil here.


this power tool is very helpful and helping me reduce time to take screws off, otherwise i would had spent whole bunch of time manually cranking wrench. i think i picked it up for around $50 over a year ago from home depot and it has been worth every penny since then.


this led light is 5000 lumen and i am using it as work light. rechargeable and it is still going for almost 3 hours without me having to charge it yet. i picked it from walmart clearance abt a week ago and in my opinion it already has paid itself off just by help in this job.

 

do you guys think it would be worthit to change fuel injectors since i have everything out? or its not needed.