Update on Head gasket repair

Had to burn oil at high rate which they did and do because of low tension rings. Your experience is when most see it but it was an issue early on. Prius was one of the LAST Toyotas with the problem. Remember a good 1.8L can go 5,000 miles without any measurable oil loss. So “normal” half or three quarter loss in that time is also oil burning. Camry and RAV4 among others also suffered excessive oil burning. But they usually did not blow head gaskets because they did not thermally cycle like a Prius. Corollas are a good example back then with low tension rings, egrs in a 1.8L but no thermal cycling. Multifactorial.

 

Yeah I see when you come from dealing with this company for 40 some odd years and getting easily 300K out of old timey Corollas and then fast forward 40 years and you're looking at getting 125 150k out of like same type vehicle is just not a thing for us at all very disappointing and to me it was just showing me that Toyota and other manufacturers I have seen are moving to planned obsolescence and are very skillful and have spent many dollars and much time thinking about how and when to implement this and they've been very cold and calculating and how to do it and they've actually done a really good job with it they've waited for a certain type of folk to come along and a certain type of situation to come along and they've capitalized on it very well very smart no doubt about it I just don't participate can't do it working backwards doesn't work for me.

 

Not sure this was the reason. I think Toyota wanted better fuel efficiency as a marketing goal and to satisfy government efficiency rules and thought low tension rings was an easy win. When the rings started burning oil on earlier models they did not worry about it but just made “normal” as low as 600 miles per quart (1200 miles on a gen3). But gen3 also blew head gaskets and Toyota THEN stopped and changed in mid 2014. Today’s newer Toyotas don’t have oil burning as an issue. Toyota also made the gen3 v wagon until 2021 in other countries and we don’t hear about head gaskets from them.

 

Honda went down the same road pretty recently I believe with oil burning. So yeah buy the old cars.