How inevitable are the HG and Inverter failure in 2014 Prius.

[SiddharChris]

Hello Everyone,

I'm looking at a 2014 Prius with 66k miles from the first owner with complete service history in The Netherlands as my first car. I'm getting 1 year warranty from the dealer in the included price (13.5k €). I was reading the PriusChat discussions about the inevitable Head gasket and inverter failures that will result in expensive engine replacement (say about 5000 $). 

I would like to know how sure these will happen to any 2014 Prius, how to detect these early and how to prevent these failures fom happening. I'm an Expat and cannot afford to plan offset these expenses. How have you Gen 3 owners dealt or dealing with this. 

Thank you!

[FROSTYBALLS]

Having done a search of the Prius club, only came across one post for inverter failure for a Gen 3 Prius. Doesn't seem to be a common issue in Europe.

[SiddharChris]

Thank you Frosty. I guess sticking to the recommended maintenance shall be good? Any other points to note or take care for?

[TonyHSD]

Hi and welcome. There are not many people with issues with inverter or Battery on these cars in Europe, or at least in UK. There is always possibility something goes wrong but it’s not a a wide spread as us Prius sites suggest. To prevent all trouble coming it’s simple, just service your car on time with quality parts and oil 0w20, preferably all Toyota genuine stuff. At around 100k miles you will need to do egr cooler cleaning procedure and hybrid Battery cooling fan cleaning. That’s pretty much everything. 

[john p williams]

1 hour ago, FROSTYBALLS said:

Having done a search of the Prius club, only came across one post for inverter failure for a Gen 3 Prius. Doesn't seem to be a common issue in Europe.

FB--does Toyota have an extended warranty system like Lexus has --10 years old and 140.000 miles ?

[FROSTYBALLS]

The Toyota extended warranty in the UK is for vehicles up to 12 years old and under 100,000 miles. Other countries may have different arrangements.

[john p williams]

29 minutes ago, FROSTYBALLS said:

The Toyota extended warranty in the UK is for vehicles up to 12 years old and under 100,000 miles. Other countries may have different arrangements.

Thanks FB. If something like that is available in Europe it might help Christopher . He can ask.

[SiddharChris]

Thank you Tony, John and Frosty!! I just bought the car this evening from the dealer. The car comes with 2 year brand / VETOS warranty. Thanks for being gracious in your responses 🙂

[TonyHSD]

12 hours ago, SiddharChris said:

Thank you Tony, John and Frosty!! I just bought the car this evening from the dealer. The car comes with 2 year brand / VETOS warranty. Thanks for being gracious in your responses 🙂

Congratulations, enjoy your new car and many trouble free miles 👌🚗👍

[johalareewi]

It was the early gen3 prius that had inverter failure issues.  My 2009 one died.  Toyota did a recall (2011?) and modified the software to prevent inverter failure. A 2014 prius should be fine.

[QuantumFireball]

Yes, I've only heard of inverter failures with early 2009-2010 examples, and they don't appear to be that common.

Head gasket failure seems to be linked to EGR valve and cooler blockages, which is more likely to happen with high mileage. As already mentioned, it's recommended to disassemble and clean/replace the EGR valve, pipe and cooler assemblies around 100k miles (160k km). This issue appears to be less common in Europe than North America so not sure if fuel quality or driving conditions has something to do with it.

[Gerg]

1 hour ago, QuantumFireball said:

or driving conditions has something to do with it.

As well as all that mentioned above, some owners (on the aforementioned American Prius forum) have speculated that the head gaskets are suffering as well from the thermal cycling that goes with normal urban hybrid operation.

I think the cylinders that are first to be affected from engine coolant, fresh from the radiator, seem to be the cylinders that are the ones to have the gasket fail.  So, where there is a failure, cylinders 1 and 2 are common, cylinder 3 is rarer, and I've never read of cylinder 4 having failed.

In which case, ambient temperatures will probably have an effect.

I did wonder if re-torqueing the cylinder head bolts at, say, 120,000 miles, might be in order, although the initial Toyota torque values are a torque setting and then an angular loading as well.  But I'm sure a 'guide' torque could be established, but not from Toyota themselves, obviously.

Perhaps there are other brands of car with conventional stop/start technology, who will be sufferingsome head gasket problems down the line, due to extra thermal cycling?

I understand that there were several different revisions of part numbers for the head gaskets through 2009 - 2013 for the 1.8 engines.  Perhaps someone knows that that was the case, and as to what the reason was for this?

[SiddharChris]

Thank you very much Tony, Alan, Aaron and Gerg for your very kind attention on my question. I quite recently felt repeated slight jerks exactly about 1 to 2 kms after a cold start. It vanishes after engine warmup and a longer drive. I had a chat with the dealer and he says its pretty common and nothing to worry about. 

[QuantumFireball]

Are these "slight jerks" when the engine is starting and stopping when cold? I'd say this is fairly normal, along with it running somewhat roughly when cold (I think due to aggressive ignition timing).

[TonyHSD]

Ok , now I realised what you mean “jerks “ while cold , it’s because of the car process of heating up the internal combustion engine, there are a couple of stages doing so and in the first 2-3 of them the car actually doesn’t use the ice to propel itself but the electric motor only and if you push it just further to accelerate faster the ice kicks in to help and then after you done with acceleration ice turns back into generator to recharge the Battery and heat up to normal temperature. If you more careful and listen you can sense the rpm’s doesn’t goes up in the beginning of acceleration then ***** happens and rpm goes up quickly, then quiet again. To avoid that try to accelerate easier and keep driving at lower speeds or wait at least 1-2 min after start up the car then drive off. Dealer is right ,  nothing to worry. 👍

[YarisHybrid2016]

We had -4 deg. C here a week or two ago and the warm-up from cold is more apparent. If you are sat not moving, in park, and listen to the engine, it can appear that it is just ocassionally mis-firing on a cylinder, but it is nothing to worry about. The engine is running such that it is warming up as quickly as possible. You can tell when it exits warm-up as the sound changes very subtly. It then moves to generator mode.

On my car (gen. 3 Yaris) the heater directly influences when the ICE shuts off, so in cold weather I set it to HI to demist, and to also force the ICE to keep running until the heater feels very warm, then I set it to a lower temperature. If you keep running it on HI or you have the front demist button pressed, the ICE may not stop at all, and fuel economy drops through the floor. It also enables the HV Battery to take quite a charge before driving. I find if I drive as soon as the windows are clear, the HV Battery can drop to min charge and then the car lacks any power, forcing the ICE to move the car (hills are a PITA).

[Saxmaniac]

It may be worth asking Toyota dealer if an inverter recall has been done on your car, there was one in the last couple of years, just a firmware update. 2014 may have updated pistons? Look at Car Care Nut videos, he's anal about maintenance. If you look at Prius Chat you will think it's all doom and gloom, but look at the mileage those cars have done before there's any problems. Car Care Nut would say 5k miles oil change, halve the replacement time for fluids, never believe anything about sealed for life transmission, but do fluid at 50 - 60k. There's plenty here that will dispute all this but I'm just passing on what he advises, and he's a master tech over the pond 

[TonyHSD]

Super interesting video about head gaskets. Enjoy 👍

 

[AisinW]

There is indeed a campaign of inverter replacement on 2010-2014 Prius in USA. I believe all prius 3 are assembled in Japan not locally. But it does not mean all have problems. 

 https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2018/RCMN-18V684-8352.pdf

The same thing with the brake booster. But I think you can take a look on the cylinder sticker orientation. If it is wrap around the cylinder, we have the revised unit. If it is along the axis, it is the old unit. 

https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/tsbs/2020MC-10181800-9999.pdff

 Unfortunately, we do not have such campaign in europe. Only in USA because NHTSA is more active and tons of Law suits will follow if Toyota did not do that. 

Clean the EGR and intake manifolds regularly 75k miles interval to prevent head gasket failure. It usually starts with oil consumption issue, clogged the EGR, increase temperature from pinging (restricted EGR), failed head gasket (rattling >10 s cold start), fail water pump, dead catalytic converter. So, change the oil <10k miles/1 y before your car consumes oil. 

Take a note that these problems only occured beyond 150k miles. Often more than 200k+ miles that many American had reached these days.  Americans treat cars like horses, just fuel and go, oil change as cheap as possible <$30 in Jifffylube,Walmart,Tireplus, etc with coupon. Never change brake fluid nor transmission fluid. They do 10k miles but not using full synthetic oil like 0w-20 Toyota recommended. Less than 30% maintain the car in STEALership.  

2ZR-FXE head gasket revised in fall 2012, piston and piston rings in fall 2014 production. 

[TonyHSD]

I am getting close to 100 000 miles since I cleaned my egr system. Have the gaskets set , new pcv, and just need to order some egr cleaner sprays and perhaps will do that this spring, whenever weather allows me to do it. I haven’t had any knocking on cold starts since long ago, perhaps using E5 99 or e10 with extra ethanol inside helps prevent engine detonation. 👍