Oil Catch Can, Eliminate that knock!

Yes, it's so strange man. It knocked only at idle. As soon as It put my foot on the acceleration gently it went away but came back when I depressed it. I have ordered a Leak Tester, I'll test that out as well but to this point I think something else is also wrong.
I did disassemble that black thing on the EGR, it had a cylinder inside which when revolved set the depth of the EGR valve. It was working smoothly without any sticking, then I cleaned it but you were right it wasn't necessary but I just wanted to clear this out of my list.

Then I cleaned the injectors, they had grime all over them especially near the outlets. I cleaned them and then fitted them back.
Upon first start up there was very loud knock but just for 3 or 4 seconds at most which to this date has always happened whenever I have cleaned EGR so I guess that was pretty normal after tune-up. Then I turned it off and tried turning it on and off again, while it was stone cold but there was no knock. It hasn't knocked since then. May be a couple of times I have heard something when I manually fired up the ICE using Accelerator pedal, just when ICE starts up, a very small knock type noise for 1/4th of a sec. But I am not worrying about it because what it had before was just a nightmare to all of us. And the weird part? Just a week ago she ran perfectly fine. I always turn my car on before going out, and let it warm up for 5~10 minutes till I grab my stuff. Never ever, I have heard a single knock until last week, it suddenly started doing this. It's cooling down right, will test again in a couple of hours.

 

If cleaning the injectors solved the problem, I’m very happy for you. Rough idle is usually caused by a vacuum leak, although Prius has very few (if any? vacuum hoses. But a poor fit on the intake manifold or if the gasket doesn’t fit right and it allows unmetered air in, you could get the knocking you described.

 

UPDATE:

Cold Startups Done After Fuel Injector Cleaning : 2
Startups with Knock : 0

No knocking experienced till now. Have done a cold startup (but it was a bit warm today lol) so I am gonna keep on testing this thing. But so far it looks like it was the Fuel Injectors!!!!


My conclusion: If your car knocks badly! no matter you gave it a full warm cycle or not, it always knocks do this:
1. Put it into maintenance mode (when cold)
2. Start you car (ICE will turn on instantly)
3. Rev it gently!
4. If knocking goes away when pressed and is back when depressed even if done repeatedly, it's probably your fuel injectors.
5. Warm it up for 5 minutes. Switch off and then on turn maintenance mode off.

For me, my injectors sprayed beautifully but they were clogged, if your injectors are this much dirty as mine this probably means there is grime where they are housed inside the chamber and these chunks of grime don't let the spray reach it's destination the way it's supposed to be. I cleaned the housing with a cloth soaked in carb spray. Don't spray directory. It may harm your valve seats.


I also removed the OCC just for a couple hundred miles, I didn't wanna have any external entities in the system, right now my problem was to solve the knocking problem, with OCC removed it was just one less thing to worry about. I'll add it again after this tank of fuel.

Moreover, injector cleaner in my case would never have worked as it's designed to improve the spray pattern, how'd it clean the outsides and the housing? so you might need to clean them by removing them. It's fairly easy to remove and reinstall them just make sure not to loose any rubber rings at the top.


Funny Story: See my pic? one injector is missing this rubber ring. It was stuck inside the housing, I never noticed it until I was installing them, one injector felt loose, like really loose upon inspection I realized it was missing it's rubber ring. I started looking for it and it took half an hour but it was nowhere to be found, cause it remained stuck in the housing. LOL so I removed it using a tweezer and reinstalled it.

 

Yes, you are absolutely right so the first few things that I did was to use Premium gas (money wasted), Octane Booster (money kinda not wasted, it really does increase performance lol), and check for any vacuum leaks by spraying carb cleaning on connections and monitoring the RPM using an OBD2.


OMG, where we started from (OCCs) and where we're at now LOL

 

I am very happy for you! It's always a great feeling when you resolve a problem!
Though the spray pattern was okay, they were probably leaking. I've seen that problem before.
If you had applied pressure, and only opened the injector once, you probably would have seen them
leaking after a few minutes. Fuel injector cleaner in the fuel would help that also.
If you put a bottle in the tank before filling up every 5-10 fill ups, that will help keep them clean.
Also, better quality fuel. Stay away from those 7-11 type places. They usually just get the cheapest
they can get.

I hope you get many many more thousands of miles out of that engine!

 

Sweet fix, youre driving on maintenance mode!

 

Thanks. Not really, just to warm up the car to reduce knocking

 

Thank you so much! Your precious advice for checking Fuel Injectors helped a lot really! God Bless ya!

 

I did see “accelerate it gently” perhaps you meant rev the engine gently. Because me being me, I would literally drive it in maintenance mode unbeknowningly to try to reduce knocking had I not read the manual

 

Haha oh sorry, I should have been more clear about it. Just rev it a bit though don't drive it. I do sometimes, just to get rid of the Traction control

 

There’s a sequence of steps that you do before starting engine if you want to properly turn off traction control, and not through maintenance mode.

 

1. With car off, set your parking brake.
2. Without stepping on the brake, press the power button twice. Make sure P button is lit after car powers up.
3. Press the gas pedal all the way to the floor twice.
4. Step on the brake and while pressing, shift gear to N. (Look at panel indicator to confirm that it shifted to N)
5. Press gas pedal to floor twice.
5. Press P button, then press gas to floor twice. At this point you'll see orange traction control icon start to flash on the right upper corner of the panel display.
6. While pressing brake, push power button to start car. Orange traction icon will remain flashing.
Easy way to remember the steps above is: P 2x gas, N 2x gas, P 2x gas.

 

And after the sequence, you can crash your prius as many times and you will never die.

 

Hi all! I'm new to the Prius but not to catch cans(I have/had turbocharged cars) I just installed one this weekend on my Prius when I changed the oil. Being in Cali I opted to tuck it away, but my smog tech would let it slide if/when he finds it.

I went with a larger capacity can because I don't want to be bothered with popping the hood frequently(my other vehicles do that enough) Also I wanted one with a petcock/ball valve for easy draining. I'm still not finished with the install(I want to add another mounting bracket and drill a hole in the plastic skid plate so it will drain under the car like an oil change) but I'll do that when I change the plugs and clean the EGR system in a few weeks.

 

Update: I'll be reinstalling the beloved OCC tomorrow. Anything I should keep in mind while doing it?
P.S My MPG figures are insane now! I have been complaining about my fuel consumption particularly on higher speeds when ICE runs all the time. There's a 10 MPG increase roughly.

 

You are very welcome! Sometimes, it's just something simple.

 

Great location, there's finally 3 people here that went with under the air intake hide installation. How do you drain yours? I take the air intake off and pull the can to drain mine.

 

Without OCC

 

With OCC