Oil Catch Can, Eliminate that knock!

Quoting a pc user, “that’s insanity.”

 

Thanks everyone for chiming in. Looks like I'll be tearing into it this morning and hoping for the best. I wish I'd have known about this a few months ago, but it wasn't until the cold weather that anything became obvious.

My gen 2 is at 232k and counting and got passed on to my daughter...maybe I should have left well enough alone and stuck with that one to 300k myself lol

SM-G981V ?

 

Intake is nearly clean. I still can't see that it's possible to have as much watery oil sludge in the bottom of the intake after having installed an occ even though I only cleaned it from the bottom last week. I hope I'm wrong and it's not the head gasket but I can't imagine it being anything else.

The EGR cooler is completely plugged. Still working on that. Oven cleaner and a 1/16" brass rod have helped at least get something passed all the way through but I've got a long way to go still.

SM-G981V ?

 

A power washer really makes short work of the job. Unfortunately, it's not exactly "power washer weather" in Northwest Ohio right now.

 

You can look into the intake at the pistons while the intake manifold if off.
Is the piston clean? Like water and been washing it? Well, steam actually.
And you might be able to see some water/coolant leaking in.
Don't forget to use a rag and carb cleaner on cylinder head to clean the intake port.
And intake valves as best you can.

It's a LOT more work when the EGR Cooler is completely clogged. The oven clean will
eat the carbon, but you'll have to do several passes on it. The rod does help clear a passage.
The pressure washer does a good job, but it is COLD there!

If you search the internet for junk yards you should be able to find a spare cooler.
I found mine for $55, with free shipping.

Just stick to it, you'll get it cleared.

 

Wait til the summertime, you'll experience an entirely different issue.

 

If there is a bright side to this, you will know 100% the job is done correctly.

 

Just hit 100k well I'm at 102k now. 2014 Prius V doesn't burn any oil. Here are some photos of EGR intake cleaning. Cooler I'd say was at 20%. First time doing the cleaning on this car. Intake manifold not bad at all. I used a pressure washer I shot water into EGR passages tons of small specks of carbon kept popping out. I purchased tons of nylon and wire brushes. I didn't even require them no sludge.

 

There should maybe be an photo exposure how-to, on page one of this thread? @Tideland Prius ?

For typical cell phone pic of something like the cooler interior: touch the screen where you want focus AND exposure to be correct, say the dark interior. This’ll get it sharply exposed and bump up brightness a lot.

All that said, the cooler interior didn’t look too bad; better to catch this sooner than later. Besides flow reduction, it’s speculated here that carbon coating also reduces efficiency of the cooling fins.

 

An easy measurement I didn't know about before:

One can plug in Techstream and pull right up the test value from the car's last automatic test of EGR flow:



It could be really interesting for people planning an EGR cleaning to post the 'before' value, and then after doing the work, do a DTC clear (which forces the monitors to run again, even if there was no DTC to clear), wait for an updated 'after' value, and post that.

It would be of interest to see how low the Test Value was before cleaning, and how much the cleaning increased it, maybe with pictures of the 'before' passages, so we could start to build a sense of how bad-looking the visual appearance goes with how large an effect on flow.

 

Maybe nothing lol. Just thinking: this thread has all these black hole pics, exposure driven by bright metal flange.

Second paragraph of my post 1909 (or something sim), near top of thread??

 

Before having gone past a point of no return with HG replacement I decided to grab a ratchet and spin the motor to see if I could tell if there was coolant in a cylinder. I was hoping for a nearly impossible compression stroke with some gurgle or spray up through an intake valve...no such luck. I was just really hoping for some confirmation of coolant in a cylinder so I would know this HG job is a necessity and not just paranoid caution.

One thing I did notice is the amount of rattle inside the motor as I cranked the motor by hand. It was noisier than any motor I have ever worked on before. Is that normal? Maybe a timing chain and tensioner thing?

SM-G981V ?

 

Boroscope inspection.

 

Yeah, I wish I had something I could use.

SM-G981V ?

 

The AutoZone that I work at, and many of them have a rental borescope tool.

 

You can buy one on amazon for about $15 that works with your phone.

 

That's good to know...I've rented from autozone for 25+ years but I would never have thought to check on a borescope.

I just pulled the plugs...all of them looked good...except #3 was def wet...and smelled like coolant...quick taste...yep coolant.
Ok at least now I know I'm not proceeding for no reason...that makes me feel a little better about it for some reason.

EGR cooler is getting there, still oven cleaner periodically.

I guess it's time to deal the engine mount, timing cover, and exhaust.

SM-G981V ?

 

I hope you really didn't taste that coolant!
I guess you need a head gasket...
Don't forget the pressure washer with the oven cleaner..

 

Delete the PCV. Use the catch can but don't feed it back into the intake manifold. Also close the intake manifold with the plug. Ever sonce I've done this, manifold has been so clean!

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