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Prior to dumping the injector cleaner into a 1/2 full gas tank, I drove a mile down the street to Chevron. I poured the entire bottle into the gas tank and filled up the car
1 thing I noticed, the car started up fine. Keep in mind, the CT has sat for a full week on the driveway. She warmed up all the way until EV mode kicked in, and no shudder/no shakes. This was at 8 PM and at 52 degrees (which is cold here, for San Diego standards)
Any thoughts gents? Did the new spark plugs do the trick? Did soaking up all that oil under the TB do the trick?
Also, made an appointment with a shop to have them clean out the egr pipe/egr cooler and intake mani
Possible head gasket problem. Seen this with the Toyota Prius. Toyota has a TSB for the egr giving the same shakes when first starting. Is your coolant low on the reservoir?
Spark plug gapping is possible issue for the shudder.
Let's think about how ice works.
inject fuel and air mixture
Compression
Spark
Bang motion
Eject gases
Repeat.
No spark, or no fuel or one thing missing from that equation. Something is going to be a MISS, thus a shudder right?
So thinking that, plugs were way out of wack. This is a big issue with high performance cars. The cars would do so much air and fuel that the spark plug can't perform and sometimes get blown out, kinda like a match. Or just plain fail to ignite. We all see the blue spark when we light our stoves or BBQ in the summer. Same concept and idea. If gapping is off it doesn't spark. In the case of the car it needs to and has to spark each and every time. When it doesn't it studders.
Bubbles is your imagination. Coolant in the oil it going to be much much more. You'll be luckier winning the lottery if you were able to detect a head gasket leak by looking at the dipstick. Here's a smarter trick, go sniff the coolant bottle. Smells sweet like coolant? You'll be smiling, smells like exhaust you're frowning. Remember exhaust and coolant is exchanging places, thus why wouldn't it smell like exhaust. Just because it's a hybrid, all the other rules in a combustion engine still apply!!
Hope this helps, don't get to paranoid after seeing radins blown HG thread.
BTW I'd inspect the coil packs for cracks. That's the delivery system of the spark to the spark plug. That fails, that means no spark.
Thanks for all the input everyone, trying to figure this out is pretty stressful. Gshadow, I'll take a second look at the coil packs. I did swap positions on those, cylinders 1 with 3 and cylinders 2 with 4 to see if my CEL would move and cause a misfire in a diff cylinder, and the misfire CEL stayed on cylinder 1.
Update:
Got a call from Lexus Corp, and they'd like for me to take the car into a dealership for inspection. I complained about oil consumption and they will "consider" a repair if diagnosis shows signs of excessive oil consumption.
The morning I fired up my car to drive to the dealership .... the shakes came back! But this time, only for like 2 seconds so it wasnt so bad. But still .... nonetheless, not a fun thing to hear/feel when you start up the car.
I'll report back, with what wonderful findings the dealership see's during inspection
Dealer called back, they addressed the Misfire CEL on cylinder 1 with a software upgrade. They for whatever reason, decided to skip my request for a test to see if my engine consumes oil excessively. The service advisor on the phone told me burning a qt of oil here and there is normal, but something tells me not to the tune of 5 qts per 10k miles driven .... cause if that is the case, I can technically never need to change my oil and just top off as I go (if the filter was on top of the engine, that would be rad). They advised me if I pay for the oil consumption test (another $160) that if repairs are needed, it would come out of my own pocket
Lexus corporate also called me back to follow up with my status and I advised them, the CT is waiting for me at the dealer to be picked up, and I requested for my case manager to follow up with the dealer to see if there is something that could be done about my oil consumption (pref NOT out of my own pockets)
is this the world we live in now? all CT owners need a software upgrade in order to prevent CEL's for misfire? and if such is the case .... do we have our own means of downloading said software, and performing the upgrade ourselves?
if we are not allowed to perform the above task on our own ... is this some elaborate scheme to force CT owners to all pay a visit to the dealer sooner or later?
is this the world we live in now? all CT owners need a software upgrade in order to prevent CEL's for misfire? and if such is the case .... do we have our own means of downloading said software, and performing the upgrade ourselves?
if we are not allowed to perform the above task on our own ... is this some elaborate scheme to force CT owners to all pay a visit to the dealer sooner or later?
my Car had this problem before. It is a manifold intake fault.
I brought the car back to dealer and they actually replaced the manifold for me. Of course free of charge. even after the replacement. I still experience the shaking once in a while, but not that bad~!!
In the 2011 to 2012 models, the TSB for this calls for a new intake manifold I believe. 2013 to 2016 (or maybe 2017 now too) calls for an ECU software update that "lowers the chances of this occurring," according to the TSB. My mechanic printed it out for me from his system. This is what leads me and my mechanic to believe that Toyota / Lexus is aware of this issue and isn't interested in solving it, just patching it. It's very possible that this is what lead to what happened to my car.
So after 1 week of driving around in a courtesy car ... I finally get my CT back. I went ahead and approved for an oil change (to the tune of $100) so I can return the car in 1000 miles, for an oil consumption review. They said, they can only do this oil test if I use their oil and their filter ... funny part is the invoice shows "mobil 0w-20" oil, which is the same stuff I use ....
When I started up the car at the dealership, no shakes! YAY! I took the car home and let it sit for about 6 hours, and then it was time to run errands. When I turned on a car, just a 1-2 sec shake, which I was told "is normal to shake a little". As Raidin says, the software flash "fix" is to lower the chances of the shakes, not fully address it.... I guess I can live with that. Fast forward 1 hour later and as I leave the store after 15 mins of shopping, I go to turn on my car .... I not only get the shakes again, but another CEL ... the same one .... P0301 (misfire in cyl 1) ...
NOTED:
-no new gas added to car
-car only made 2 trips since leaving the dealer ... 1 = home. 2 = to the store
-total miles before CEL came back on = 36 miles
I call the dealer, and they asked me to bring back the car for further diagnosis. 1 thing I'd like to share that I found amusing ... the tech mentions that my cold air intake could cause the misfire .... correct me if I am wrong but, does our MAF not regulate how much air is being used by the engine? IE, if i put on a CAI or use the stock air box or have a filthy oem filter (or a clean one for that matter) .... the MAF should know how much air to meter and use ... correct?
Got a call from my service advisor, they found damage on my engine wire harness, namely the area near the maf. He emailed me a picture of it as well .... the tech believes that the damage on the wire can throw off the maf/voltage/reading. Also, they mentioned that the wire appears to be "modded" in a fashion where, it appears as if someone added 1 extra wire in there.... I'm at a loss for words
sorry for the lack of updates guys, car has been sitting for 2 wks waiting on parts. here is where we stand:
-contacted a good buddy, he did a repair on the wire. lets hope it holds up, otherwise replacing the entire engine harness is the next step .... *gulp*
-said good buddy mentions, he tested the maf and found it to somehow be faulty
-ordered a new oem maf, at a super crazy good price thanks to my awesome buddy
-while we were at it, went ahead and ordered 4 new coil packs as well due to super crazy good pricing
-also, ordered new spark plugs as the dealer said SC20HR11 was wrong and SC16HR11 is the correct plug (upon google search, the SC16HR11 is apparently the pn that supersedes the older plug, and is 1 heat range hotter)
after work today, will check gaps on new plugs, then remove old plugs and coil packs and maf, and install all the new stuff. will report back over the weekend. wish me luck everyone!
03-01-18, 12:00 PM
