Engine Problems: Any thoughts??

oil changed at that 45K service? i'd guess so.

sounds like an engine failed to start code- likely caused by oil overfill. any oil overfill will blow oil into the intake and causes problems like this. the 1G is very sensitive to this.

take off your air filter and look down in the hole into the intake with a flashlight. take a long screwdriver and push gently on one side of the butterfly valve. look past the valve and see if there's oil pooled in there. that would be the result of an overfill.

check your oil level. see if it looks over the 'full' mark at all. to correct the problem, you're going to need a throttle body intake cleaning- IF this is the case. tell them you want it done for free because it was their fault for overfilling.

also have them check for any TSBs or open recalls. depending on the ECU in there, that can potentially be the source of this kind of problem. if it is an ECU, they should cover the cost of replacement. if they tell you it's out of warranty and won't do it for free, ask for the customer service number for toyota and give them a call. IF it is an ECU related issue, toyota will likely take care of it.

good luck, let us know how it turns out.

 

just per chance you didn't just fill it with gas in the last day or so and get a bad batch and now have a plugged fuel filter?

 

ick, hope not... that'd be a bad situation

 

i'd switch back to regular gasoline. high octane isn't particularly great in the prius. good luck.

 

my thinking exactly, no need to spend more than what the car was built to run on.

 

So must have been filled too fast???

 

glad the problem is sorted out, now it's up to the dealership to take care of it.

if you post your location in your profile you may find some help from priuschat locals about where good service can be found. if the place you're using now keeps messing up it's time to look elsewhere.

sounds like the excess oil could've run off into the intake and leveled off the dipstick. either way, there was definitely an overfill if there's oil in the intake.

good luck getting this fixed up, let us know how it goes and how the car runs afterward.

 

NICE diagnosis, galaxee !

The oil by stick measurement was actually on the low side, suggesting it was not so much overfill, but somehow spill.

Any ideas what would cause this ?

 

oh, thanks DH's shop sees these often enough because they're so damn sensitive, so he was familiar with the symptoms.

actually, he's off washing the car at the detail shop right now and checking everything over for our upcoming road trip... but from what he said last night i think the overfill gets blown into the intake when the engine runs. a spill would have had to get through the air filter cover, through the air filter, and into the throttle body, and run down when the throttle body opened. that would have been one hell of a spill and a sequence of near-impossible events. the smell of burning oil would have followed the car for miles...

he showed me all this using a diagram of the engine that i can't find now. i'll get him to explain in technical terms what happened because my memory of all things engine is not very precise.

all in all it comes down to the excess oil going elsewhere which i imagine would correct the level on the dipstick.

maybe Frank will stop by and explain better than i can at the moment. otherwise, i'll have DH explain tonight.

 

The car wants 87 octane gas, anything higher is just wasting fuel
and possibly confusing the ECUs.
.
_H*

 

aww, thanks -_-

i just am so used to working in a sterile environment i'd freak out at being covered in various automotive greases all day... :lol:

 

HA HA! i can see that now. spraying the engine and all other working surfaces down with quatsyl... getting out the uv light... :lol:

maybe i'll stick to the research for now though and just interpret tech talk to the priuschat masses. i'm just not happy unless i've got an open container of etoh within 5 feet of me i had (jokingly) wanted to be a science jargon interpreter for a while, now it's a tech talk interpreter... what next

:lol: :lol:

 

I believe that using the higher octane can damage the emissions system if used for an extended period of time.

 

sorry for the late reply just got back home after a nice walk on the seawall, just nice to get out of the house. Went and looked at the design of the pcv breather set up and if this Toyota engine is anything like the 5P series if you pump engine oil in with a metering pump like a lot of dealers use I'm sure that you could fill the cam cover up and have oil get past the seperator in the cover and then it's a stright run down to the intake manifold and the PCV valve where it would be sucked into the manifold. If you pour the oil in 1 quart/liter at a time with some delay in between I doubt that you could over fill the cam cover to the point of having oil get down into the pcv valve.