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I bought my 2012 CT with 55,000 miles on it and shortly after that the recall happened. My manifold was replaced with about just over 110,000 miles and I now have 180,000 miles. It's important to note that this shudder continued during the entire time and progressively got worse. I have read that this could have been the EGR stuck in the open position. It seemed to often happen on cold starts. The thing is I really liked the car when it was running smooth.When I look book I'm thinking maybe the head gasket should have been diagnosed earlier.
Seems the dealer replaced the manifold cause it was dirty and/or it was under recall, not realizing the root cause that could actually cause catastrophic damage to the engine: the EGR cooler itself being clogged over time. The cooler is the thing they should've replaced as having a much higher priority than the manifold. A dirty manifold is par for the course on ANY car, particularly ones with high mileage. But on this particular car it's a clogged EGR cooler you have to be concerned about. Not really the intake manifold (although it's good to replace that too with the new design) That's what likely led to your HG damage as the high combustion temps over time (from the clogged egr cooler) picked away at your HG ultimately leading to combustion leaks (rough running and cross contamination)
Moral of the story:
clean or replace your EGR coolers at around 100-125k, along w/ EGR valve, EGR pipe, intake manifold, and throttle body.
Most dealers for any make/model of cars aren't as up to speed sometimes as forum enthusiasts are. Used to be in the BMW community and most BMW dealer techs did not correctly diagnose or know of particular issues known to the community. So they'd replace part A based on what their troubleshooting manual or the service advisor (who is equally in the dark often times) approves, instead of replacing the required part A, B, E, and F thinking part A alone would fix the problem. Then before they figure it out, it's too late.
Dealerships have access to or simply care about just enough to get by. But they aren't enthusiasts, particularly not for cars that aren't their own, so there's little incentive to take a deeper dive into problems than necessary. That and they also have 10 other models to service all with their own unique set of problems.
Moral of the story is dealers suck. I always do my own research and all my own work. but when needed, i'd recommend a small enthusiast-grade independent shop.
holy $%&! do i agree with your statements E46CT. I. You hit the nail on the head, their techs have to follow toyota's troubleshooting guide, even if there is overwhelming evidence contradictory to what the guide says. I think what also makes it worse is that because they are the dealers, they treat us like we are the dumb ones and are incapable of servicing our property. Our engine report came back telling us that our NGK iridium spark plugs I installed were inferior and should have used OEM platinum plugs. ARE YOU FLIPPING KIDDING ME???? Then proceeded to put iridium plugs in the "new" engine. I was less then pleased with their verbiage and if they proceeded to use it, they had better back it up with some studies proving other products are "inferior".
Wow! Look at us we've solved this CT problem! I felt the same way when I talked with Lexus customer service. I felt like they were blaming me when I was trying to point out that there was a significant amount of complaints on line about these EGR related problems. All I wanted was get some kind of answer as to why they have not addressed this issue to date with all the Lexus forum chatter about this very issue.
Thoughts about my CT issues. After all of my issues I believe the head gasket may have been the problem. I started up my car one day and suddenly it started blowing smoke and I knew straight away something terrible was happening. I popped the hood and noticed my coolant was just about gone which which led me to believe the head gasket blew which it did. I just replaced my gasket($2500) and my car is finally running the way it should. No more shudder on start up and it's running nice and smooth. My mechanic told me the new gasket appeared to be a little sturdier which makes me think maybe the original was not adequate to start with in terms of it breaking down prematurely. I know many people out there have complained about these issues with this car so hopefully this can help you avoid unnecessary bills.
Your headgasket was the problem, but not the cause of the problem. The cause of the headgasket failure was likely a clogged EGR system which the dealer failed to recognize. Instead, upon your complaint and taking the car into the shop, they replaced the intake manifold which while fine on its own, didn't do much for the underlying EGR problem you likely had. Left to its own devices, it caused excess heat to kill the HG. I think a Toyota dealer may have known better since they work on the much higher volume Prius where Lexus likely doesn't see that many CTs. But I'm sure the Toyota-recommended solution would not involve any cleaning of the EGR, but replacement which would likely go into the thousands. This is best left to DIYers and hybrid specialists to sort out.
I find the same stuff going on in the BMW world. Dealers saying yep $5,000 gotta replace this. Go on the forum and find out you can replace XYZ for $500 and have the same fix, if not better. Sadly CT and Prius aren't really enthusiast cars so the kind of owners that own them aren't likely to be hanging out on an internet forum and don't sign up until it's too late.
The CT200h does not have a reliable engine like a corolla.
Mine ended up burning oil and then throwing a rod at like 110,000 miles I had to install a replacement engine for $4,500. 60K mileage engine from LQK that also had a warranty. Luckily insurance covered it and my rates did not go up.
Drives great again with the newer engine.
To me it seems like the engine cant take the constant start and stopping and basically tears itself apart.
With your engine keep vibration, it probably is burning oil. For that price of the head gasket from the dealer you could have done an engine swap.
So.....Like I mentioned earlier it all started with the EGR recall. EGR,manifold and head gasket replacement! I've read about blown engines and all I have to say is Lexus needs to admit this car has serious issues! Now I have an oil leak after replacing my head gasket! The leak is on the lower driver side below the head gasket. A Lexus mechanic said it might be the oil relay switch but I replaced it and it's still leaking. Next week I will look further into it. Anyone have any ideas?
Did you replace it correctly? Looking at pics of a bare block, that's all that seems to be in that area you describe. how do you know it's still leaking? di dyou clean the area completely before installing the new switch?
Well, there are technically 3 places it could leak. The valve cover gasket, the valve-head gasket, and the switch (I think we can rule out a head gasket oil leak). Nice clean oil is a little harder to see where is leaking compared to old dirty oil.
If you really really clean the area, then drive it around you should be able to see/feel where the leak is coming from like e46 said.
How much oil oil are we talking about? Few drops on the ground, small puddle, large puddle?
04-09-19, 12:33 PM
