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EGR valve on Toyota Prius


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My Toyota Prius (2011) after 60,000 miles got warning sign lit up on the dash. I booked diagnostic at a certified Toyota service, by the time I got there, the sign disappeared. 

I did the diagnostic anyway and was told that EGR (exhaust gas recirculation)  valve is failing (more like foiling).  The quote for replacing it at Toyota is almost 600 GBP, no other recommendation was given or reasons for the valve failure was explained. 

A few months later the sign came back again, with the same signal - the car is loosing power when idling. EGR works by recirculating a portion of an engine's exhaust gas back to the engine cylinders. I called to Toyota service again and asked them to book me for the valve replacement, they stated that diagnostic is first (each cost 60 GBP) and only then ordering parts.

I asked them to replace it and if the warning sign will still be there we think about the diagnostic. They refused.

Digging into the forums, the  EGR clogs up because exhaust gas is not recirculating back into the engine at idle, and generally only happens when the vehicle exceeds 30 mph. Which for city cycle is almost never. Last time the sign disappeared as I was driving 20 miles to the centre on the motorway and helped to clean the valve. 

Replacing the valve every 60,000 miles for 600+ 60 GBP is a bit excess or flaw in design (particularly for hybrid). I talked to the service station, apparently checking EGR is not part of any service, they do not clean them..just making money... Have you experienced this on your Prius and other any alternative solutions? 

 

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Hi Peter,

Welcome to the forums, If you perform a search for "EGR valve" you will no doubt receive a list of various issues all related to the EGR valve clogging up/failing. My storey is that I own a late 2011 Prius which up until a year ago was fine to drive. I took it out for a drive one morning and noticed whilst driving at around 60mph it would judder slightly and then stop. I ignored this for a few days and then I took my car for a drive to the zoo with the wife and kids and upon pulling up I noticed that the engine was still running(was showing a full battery) and it was making a clattering sound which sounded !Removed! awful and worrying at the same time!

I spend the rest of the day in a bad mood wondering if I would be able to get home without issue, and also what the hell was making such a noise and also how much it was all going to cost to get looked at and repaired if need be....I booked my car at a local garage as on the way home I had the EML light appear and this was then read and it produced the fault code related to insuifficient air flow EGR valve which was then taken out and cleaned up using a carb cleaner and put back by the garage as they recommended I try this first before replacing the actual part to save money more than anything.

I few months went by and all seemed well until I drove to work one day as low and behold the same !Removed! thing happened again, noises, jerkiness of power delivery etc and this time I took it back to my trusty local garage and told them the issues and even though I didn't have any fault codes appear on the dash, I kind of put 2 and 2 together and made an assumption it was most likely to be the same issue as before given the problems it was showing. Whilst my car was at the garage I was told they would need it for a few days due to been only a small outfit and them being fully booked up, I proceeded to look on eBay and managed to find a brand new Toyota Prius EGR valve which I got lucky on and won for a bargain price of around £95....I had made provisions that I would need to cough up and buy one from my local dealer or a person off here who provides genuine Toyota parts and good prices...around £250 I think.

My advice would be, buy the part yourself and find a good local garage and explain to them about the situation and find out if they would be willing to work on your car. I say this as a few garages I used in the past have been all for working on cars until you explain about it being a hybrid and then the fun begins! Most half decent "worth their salt" mechanics shouldn't be too put off working on the engine as it's no different to a normal petrol engine- albeit having electrical components related to the hybrid charge system and whatnot...the EGR valve does not require and interferance to the hybrid system as far as I'm aware and as such should be able to be swapped over with minimal tools and fuss.

Mike.

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There seems to have been a recurring theme amongst the seemingly small number of cases that the owners suspect (quite strongly in one or two cases - e.g. Grumpy Cabbie) that using cheap (supermarket) fuel and lots of stop/start driving are chief culprits.

I use about 75% Tesco, 15% Asda, 5% Esso and a few odd other places, and do a lot of short, but not stop/start journeys, with a long trip or two most months.  My last Gen 3 Prius was running fine when I sold it at 4 years old with 60k on the clock, and it's too soon (12k) to comment on my Gen 4.

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EGR valves are a common fitment to both petrol and diesel engines - not just Toyota - in order to meet emissions standards. There are several threads on the Auris and Rav4 clubs re cleaning the EGR valves, although mainly on diesels.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Drpepper99uk,

Many thanks. What I did is to find an EGR valve cleaner and add it to the petrol. After driving about 200 miles, the warning light disappeared again. The car is seemingly holding power when idling. 

I canceled my appointment with Toyota. Even if I have to add the EGR valve cleaner for the next 10 tanks it would be cheaper, than replacing the valve (particularly at Toyota for 600 pounds). They would sell it only at 350, believe you or not...

FROSTYBALLS,

I understand it, but seemingly Toyota has the most expensive ones :-) Particularly for the Prius, which is design for a city, i.e. limit 30 mph with frequent starts and stops. 

Regarding the petrol I was filling up at Shell petrol stations most of the time, seemingly made no difference in this case.

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Bit late to this party but yeah, EGR valve issues quite common with us diesel owners and only fairly recently become a problem with petrol owners. I still don't know why the heck they even put them on petrol engines. They are stupid devices that actually make economy, reliability and all emissions except for NOx worse.

Anyway rant over - Time for some more useful information!

First thing is, don't bother going to Toyota about EGR issues - They will just replace them at extremely high cost, when all they actually need is a clean (Along with any throttle bodies that feed them). I don't know how hard it is to get at it in a HSD like the Prius, but certainly in my car it was easily accessible - 5-6 bolts, 5-10 minutes spraying and soaking with a load of carb cleaner to melt all the soot off (Carb Cleaner is like magic with burnt on soot! Just keep it away from paintwork!!), then another 20-odd minutes letting the thing dry out thoroughly. (Carb cleaner is combustible and if you don't let it dry your engine will knock quite alarmingly for a few seconds as it detonates during the compression cycle!).

On mine its easy enough that I can do it myself despite having limited car mechanic skill.

Most independent garages should be able to do the job if they know their way around a HSD, although it might be worth asking fellow owners (e.g. on this forum) if they have people they recommend who have done it before so they can just do it instead of wasting time poking around trying to find it! ;)

 

The causes in diesel are purely that the EGR is sending sooty exhaust gas back into the engine which eventually causes smaller air feed tubes to get blocked up. This is exacerbated by town driving as the engine never gets hot enough to burn the soot off.

In petrols unfortunate enough to have EGR valves, the problem is lessened because petrol engines waste lots of energy as heat which gets the engine to optimal operating temperature much faster than a diesel engine, and helps burn the soot off; However the HSD engines tend to have a harder time getting to temperature, esp. in town, as they keep getting switched off and cooling, and while petrol exhaust normally doesn't have much soot, because that exhaust gets fed back into the engine it can't burn all the petrol properly an soot levels are increased.

<more ranting>

All stupidness to reduce NOx production when all they need to actually do is stop the petrol engines running lean! But that would reduce fuel economy and increase CO2 production which, until now anyway, has been the governmental push behind engine development.

But that's typical of the stupid knee-***** policies our government has been putting out; They should have left it at engine sizes and added another category for forced induction engines, since that was one of the things they were worried about with the old system that made them change to CO2 (e.g. 0.8L engines with lots of forced induction to make powerful cars that got around the tax!)

I must admit I think the new system is probably fairer, although it does turn over a decade of environmental consciousness on its head. Now people will be either buying pre-2017 cars or not really caring about their cars emissions.


 

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My mate has just had the EGR valve replaced on his 4yr old sub-30k mile Jaguar XF for the princely sum of £870. Ouch!

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54 minutes ago, Duffryn said:

My mate has just had the EGR valve replaced on his 4yr old sub-30k mile Jaguar XF for the princely sum of £870. Ouch!

Crikey, components like EGR valves and MAF sensors usually respond well to just a good clean. Even using a specialised cleaner, he could have saved himself around £860 lol.

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Have a look at the post of 18th May in the following thread - 

 

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