Gen 2 Blown Head Gasket; Seal it with Blue Devil?

The only experience I have seen here with head gasket sealers is they cause more problems than they fix. Clogged radiator, heater core, water pumps.

 

Plus if you want Gen 3 experience, head over to the Gen 3 Forums and ask your question over there.

 

Wait, Wut? Dude has a gen 3? Party foul.

 

That stuff will wreck his car. Gen 2, Gen 3, Gen 12. Doesn’t matter.

 

Don't what happened there, I thought I was responding to the Slick 50 guy asking specifically for Gen 3 people to reply.

 

Well the guy has a 2010 so you were correct sir. By Accident?

 

Hmm, I'm really confused now. Went and found the Slick 50 thread and his is a 2007 and he never asked for Gen 3 experience. So, somehow I've crossed the two threads.

Early onset alzheimer's, maybe.

 

ANYONE USE BLUR DEVIL SEALER YET??? ANY SUGGESTIONS???

 

Did your Prius work after using Blue Devil??? I cannot find anyone who has used Blue Devil as of yet, and i am about to use Blue Devil in my 2010 Pruis, but would like to hear anything that might help in my experiment to seal the Head Gasket in my 2910 Pruis/???

 

I used Blue Devil head gasket sealer. I had it pressure tested after that and there were NO leaks. But the crazy engine rattle persisted none the less.

New plugs didn’t stop the rattle.
New fuel injectors didn’t stop the rattle.
New coils didn’t stop the rattle.

Guess what stopped the rattle??

New EGR valve. Pulling off the EGR cooler and intake manifold and soaking them for over 24 hours in heavy duty parts cleaner and fishing a pipe cleaner type brush through them. My Prius is F I X E D. No more rattle..no check engine light. Just turned 215k miles and over 50 MPG. It was trial and error, but, my Prius lives.

 

Thank you so much for sharing this! Your post helped me try this and it seemed to have worked for me! It's only been one day but so far so good. The dealer told me i have a blown head gasket and will cost like 4k to fix and better to trade it or get a new car. After trying just the blue devil, it seemed to work right away. The engine had shaken only once as i was finishing the blue devil process and then i started driving it. I put in some oil since it was low too. Then after driving it and stopping the check engine light even disappeared! No more shaking of the engine at all now too! I just thought i share this as well if it might help anyone else out there to give it a try. I will still trade my car in for a new car but at least my issue is temporarily fixed! Thanks again!!

 

...SOOO.....

After all of the questions and 29 messages in this thread, several of which from people saying this would not work, it looks like Jean is actually answering the question by saying "YES", he's done it, and YES, it IS, in fact, working! Right? Am I reading this right? Is this an accurate summary of this 30-message thread?

I have a 2012 Prius V five. I bought it in December of 2018 with 142K miles on it from a grandpa who had clearly taken care of the car EXTREMELY well. Other than the high miles, the car was in perfect condition inside and out. It now has 171K miles on it, and I have now started experiencing similar issues as others in this thread are experiencing. I felt perfectly confident buying this particular car even though it has such high mileage because the car was taken care of so well before I got it. Knowing how well I would be taking care of it, I was confident the car would easily last me 300K - 400K miles or more!

In any case, unless the idiot light for temperate isn't working, I can say with confidence that the car has not overheated. I have an intermittent miss only while the car is at idle. I almost NEVER have to add coolant, and the need to add coolant only recently started within the last couple of weeks. The car runs fine on the highway, and highway mileage is right at the 40 mpg for which the car is rated. However, city "stop-n-go" mileage, where the intermittent miss happens. is suffering. From the usual 44-ish mpg I usually enjoy, it gets down to 35 mpg or worse. Codes are P0300, 0301 and 0302. I've had two different master mechanics diagnose the car, one of which used to work at Toyota and is certified specifically on the Prius. The regular master mechanic found water in Cylinder #1. When I had the Prius specialist confirm, at first, he didn't find any water in any of the cylinders. However, when I requested he do a compression test, he only then found water in Cylinder #1.

After going through the above, common sense (and only a limited amount of basic mechanical experience) leads me to believe that my problems are due to a head gasket problem, but that the problem is likely minor. Since I am reasonably certain the engine has not overheated, I have a reasonable amount of confidence that there are no cracks in the head or block, and that neither are warped. However, no one here in Texas is willing to just replace the head gasket. Also, I'm being told that the head gasket can't be done without removing the entire engine, requiring 18 man-hours minimum by the book. This being the case, I'm being told that for the effort, I might as well just replace the engine with a used engine from another Prius V.

If Blue Devil could solve this problem, it would truly be a miracle for me. I certainly don't want to risk gumming up anything in the engine, but I don't see that I really have anything to lose at this point. I use this car for Uber and for a private car service business, so I can't use it while I have this engine issue. Even one cylinder missing is extremely obvious to my customers between the noise and the rough ride, not to mention the check engine light being on. Attempting to reset the codes gets rid of the check engine light for anywhere from a few hours to a few days, but the codes remain even right after trying to reset the codes with one of those Bosch portable units used at places like O'Reilly Auto Parts.

So, the bottom line here is that I'd like to confirm with you, Jean, and with others in this thread whether or not I should have reasonable confidence that Blue Devil actually will work for me on this car. So what do y'all think?

 

Have any of you guys that own gen 3 Prius ask about using blue devil on the Gen 3 board? The folks that actually own a gen 3 might be more likely to be able to help you.

 

I'd say the EGR cleaning did the most good. But that late in the day (215K miles), I suspect he's not out of the woods.

I would not use Blue Devil, or similar products. My 2 cents, they should be outlawed; their main "practical" use being to temporarily mask symptoms, something added to con a prospective buyer.

 

I just got off the phone with Blue Devil. They claim that they've had 100 or so Prius people use this (to their knowledge), and a great many report successes. Since I use the car for my car service business, and since the only other alternative I have is to spend thousands replacing the engine, I don't see that I have a lot to lose by trying Blue Devil... (that is, unless anyone here can think of I reason I haven't considered). I invite anyone here who has any additional input to comment, though! I can't tell you how much I appreciate all of the comments I've read here!

 

Do you really think the Blue Devil reps would say something like "for God's sake don't use it"?

No experience with those type of products, but I've heard they can gum up everything the coolant passes through, including the radiator and cabin heater core.

Again, they seem like a stop-gap treatment, for when you're trying to mask symptoms, during a sale...

 

Since you are committed to doing this and your keeping the car if you could keep us advised on what happens after you use the Blue Devil it would be appreciated. Any clogs or cooling system problems. The other user said he had no problems after 1 day. We would be more interested in 1month, 1000 miles, 10,000 miles.

 

I'm happy to, Skibob! Will do!

 

Mendel, my apologies if I sounded gullible. That was not my intention. I guess I should have pre-qualified my comments about what they said with the frame of reference of the conversation I had with my Prius mechanic prior to speaking to them. Allow me to clarify.

First, because I use the car in my business, which means that for now it's a non-performing asset for me, the worst case scenario for me is that it doesn't work and/or completely destroys my engine causing me to have to replace the engine. Since this is the position I'm already in because of the head gasket leak, all I have to lose by trying this is the $35 I paid for the bottle of Blue Devil and the labor to have my guy put it in the car. Right?

Now, according to both my Prius guy and the Blue Devil people, the Blue Devil product is reactive only right after being introduced to the cooling system, so there is no ongoing danger of having it plug up anything (including an EGR valve) once it's in the system. However, it's possible that something like that might happen particularly on high-mileage vehicles like mine if there is already some other kind of build-up on the part's surfaces directly exposed to the coolant. So, they both say that it's better to just leave Blue Devil in the coolant once it's been introduced. I just need to be sure of the following:

- do a radiator flush on the car first before installing Blue Devil
- have my Prius guy put the car into maintenance mode first before starting the engine so that the engine will stay running. Blue Devil says they want the car to idle for 50 minutes. However, the Prius engine will only come on for a couple of minutes at a time, so putting it into maintenance mode is the only way to keep the engine on. On my 2012 Prius V Five, even maintenance mode will only keep the engine running for about 20 minutes before it turns off. However, since the cooling system on my Prius V is run by an electric water pump, it continuously pumps coolant and regulates the temperature of the engine whether the engine is on or not since it's not pulley/belt-driven. Just in case, though, our plan is for me to take the car out on the highway to try to keep the engine engaged as much as possible for the remainder of the 50 minutes while doing my best to keep RPM's slow.

I will not be selling my car. If this doesn't work, I'm still faced with replacing the engine, and I'll need to save up for that. If it does work, I'm still planning on replacing the engine, but I will have at least bought myself some time to save up money for the engine replacement while still using my car to provide my customers with service.

If my logic is flawed somewhere, please feel free to point out the flaw, Mendel. "A wise man has many advisers," right? When it comes to all things Prius, I can't think of a better place to come than this forum!

 

May I also suggest having the EGR system looked at before you add the blue devil? My understanding is a clogged EGR is what causes the head gasket problems. If that’s the case adding the cure without fixing the problem may not yield good results.