My Prius is down 4 quarts of oil 9000 miles after oil change

All I can say is, if your going to have a party bring this. Milwaukee m12 3/8 ratchet. No air hose. Battery lasts forever.

 

@Raytheeagle and @m.wynn :

Regarding the EGR cooler swap, was the replacement cooler new or salvage? If the latter, what condition was it, and did you need to do any prep, cleaning?

Also, did you replace the EGR valve as well? Any opinions on the viability of just cleaning the valve, would it be relatively easy to do?

Looking forward to your videos.

 

I just cleaned the one that has 296k stainless steel looks great still. soaked it heavy duty degreaser, oven cleaner would work too and a pressure washer. pic of non warped head!

 

Oven cleaner, brilliant!

 

Did not mean to hijack this thread. Girlfriends prius was buring oil and we will break even if she sells it but in my eyes it is money lost since she is still making payments. My ridgeline and prius are paid off. Cars depreciate and I wanted to get to the bottom of this so I bought the 296k prius for 2k$ and figured its only my time. Even if it needs a used engine (800-1200$ used) I'm still a head. Car is clean inside and out. I look at a car like an aircraft, anything can be fixed. But if it does not justify the cost I'll sell both prius' and get another civic. There has been a lot of discussion on the toyota forums with corollas eating oil as well.

 

Like! Like! Like!

Do you know whether or not this car is an oil burner?.. I think with where you're at, you may wish you didn't just drop the oil pan and pop the pistons out. If the car is a burner, the rings and return holes are likely coked in a manner to where they will chuckle at an MMO soak. Even something like GM or Toyota Top End Cleaner or BG EPR would be unlikely to make an impression, IMO. It would suck to get it all up and running just to find out it still slams oil. All this said, these things don't all burn oil but the EGR circuits do clog regardless. My intake manifold was heavily sludged at 97k miles but the EGR cooler only partially at 140k. I'd guess by 300k the cooler would have been completely blocked, too. The car doesn't burn any oil at this point, 140k. I'd feel horrible if I encouraged piston removal and you found free control rings and open return holes!!

I wouldn't call this a thread hijack. You've gone deep into a major issue which needed this type of probing/critical thinking.

 

Yeah, I was thinking this would be a lot easier with the wipers and cowl off. I've done that before, looking at the spark plugs.

I'll attach again, the Repair Manual instruction on EGR cooler/valve replacement. My head swims, trying to comprehend the optimum bolt/stud/nut install sequence, and torque sequence. I'm not sure if it's the same as what you've posted, it might be lol.

The operative principle seems to be to tread cautiously, bring all the pieces together loosely, tighten everything in a sequence that won't stress anything, end up with all faying surfaces in full, unstressed contact.

Oh btw: did you replace coolant too, or just clamp hoses?

 

I had an EGR valve/cooler salvaged from an 18k miles, 2015 ready to go in. It was essentially as new. I will post before after photos of my original valve/cooler after I get them cleaned up. I have some pics of the slavage, also. Red can Brakleen works well for cleaning too, as it does in the intake manifold. My intent with buying salvage was so I can always have a clean valve/cooler "in stock" to speed up the tedious job of cleaning the EGR circuit. With two Gen 3's in the family, it was worth the $150 spent. I'm thinking I will do this service no later than every 75k miles, so my daughter's 2011 is on deck now.

 

Yeah @Raytheeagle preaches that too, seems a good strategy.

Regarding timing for this, maybe in conjuction with the engine coolant change, what is that 100K miles? Or maybe stick with 75K, and accelerate the coolant change.

 

Never hurts to have a spare and be prepared .

@m.wynn was nice enough to let me dissect his 140 k miles Aisin pump.

Below are some pics of the water pump disassembled:

Top view looking at pump impeller:



Side view:



Side view of the pump removed from housing:



View of circuit board:



Side view of impeller:



View of impeller when Top separated upon slight pressure to bottom side:



View of magnetic driven shaft:



View of pump with shaft and impeller removed:



Backside view of pump magnets:



It appears the weak point in this design is the small tabs connecting the 2 plates of the impeller (which snapped when I applied a small force behind the solid plate). IMO they do not seem very robust. So at 200 k miles when the coolant change is due again, I'll be replacing the water pump.

Thanks again @m.wynn for letting me examine the Pump.

 

Working this weekend opened my eyes to having ratcheting wrenches in the garage.

So that's the next addition

I also have the adapters to make the electric drill a socket wrench, so similar.

 

I do not know how much oil this motor has burned. Waiting for owner to reply, I don't think he knows. How many dealers tell you exactly how much oil you have consumed between changes? It's usually some 16-20yr old kid @ the dealership changing the oil, walks away to do another car. Comes back and fills it. There is maybe one master mechanic and a bunch of uti/lincoln tech grads working there. Good mechanics work @ private shops flipping cars and put band aids on things and make 100k a year, while the lincoln guys make 25$ an hour for 8-10hours a day trying to pay off there student (20-40k$) loans and (80k$) tools . A master auto mechanic I know died by being crushed with a twin post lift. Most of the work I see is half nice person. They rarely torque to spec and break stuff on the car. That is why I haven't been to the stealership if I can help it, and when they try to pull a fast one on me they are surprised to know how much I know. If I go to the trouble of pulling the motor. I might as well change the main bearings, rod bearings, new piston rings, re hone the cylinders. Valves were not seating on cylinder 1&2 intake side due to carbon build up. The more I read this, the more I should do the full rebuild.

Autozone, advanced auto parts, car quest, orielly, napa etc. are going to hurt the auto industry in a big way when augmented reality comes out. Pull out a tablet/phone, point it at your engine. Bluetooth will communicate with your canbus/obd1/2 and the camera screen will show your engine and then proceed to tell you how to repair the damaged item with the correct tool, torque, and direction to turn the wrench. Anyone will be able to fix it. I just can't wait till electric cars have solid state batteries. Minutes to charge. electric motors last forever. If the batteries are designed correctly, they should last a good bit as well. I've been running graphene's on my race drones and they are sweet. would love to stick them in the prius but will have to figure out how to remap the computer to charge them. Bad software can destroy a motor in seconds so I'm sure there will be some sort of diesel gate/ electric gate thing in the future.

 

Knowing your oil consumption at least: is a simple matter of checking the dipstick yourself.

 

Here's a picture of what the whole engine looks like out side of the vehicle. Note the EGR system.

 

Is this the big weekend ?

 

I think it is! The poor 2010 is still hanging on with its old engine, doing about 500 miles a week. Running rough and getting awful fuel mileage. Can't wait too see how clogged up it's EGR system is!

 

Don't forget: pictures and videos.

 

This summary could be a sticky, or at least copy/pasted by any who plan on tackling this fiddly project.

The torx for the studs is E8 (external 8). They're widely available in 1/4 or 3/8 drive sockets or end wrench, even ratcheting end wrench! As we figured out Saturday, pulling the studs is THE way to go after the valve/cooler. If you're planning this job, order your E8 torx now. It's the MVP tool of the project.

 

i saw the same thing in corolla intake; so, it's not related to Atkinson's cycle. the air/oil separator in valve cover is not 100% efficient and some oil will be trapped in intake (that's toyota's oil capture can).

MMO is not good enough for those piston soaks. Kreen is the best. if you can't get Kreen (online order), B12 Chemtool (available in autoparts) worked for me too.

BTW, strong work on this project! I will do the whole EGR system cleaning closer to 100,000 miles (to combine with spark plugs and coolant service). so far, i cleaned the intake and EGR pipe at 70,000 miles and it was moderately dirty. i'm at 85,000 now.

agree. cars are now engineered to last 150,000 miles with minimal maintenance and toyota gives a modest cushion.

 

Mendel,

Despite my irrationaly obsessive thoughts regarding staying on top of this issue, I do think 100k in conjunction with the coolant change, is generally fine. But only just fine. At 97k, my intake manifold was heavily sludged and the car shuddering at light acceleration. It was not cold start knocking or acting like the engine was going to jump out of the engine bay, so my feeling is the shudder is the early onset symptom. 75k for coolant change and circuit clean will be my interval, though. I'm fine keeping the coolant extra fresh on a known head gasket muncher, and it's pretty much a drain/fill coolant circuit with no bleed tedium.