Newbie here: Just bought my first 2010 Prius.

Uh Oh....Here come the EGR fanatics!

 

Sir ma'am whatever it is I would say drive the car for a couple of months not worry about the plastics you have other worries coming your way very quickly don't waste money on plastics not just yet but you can go to amiyama.com and spend all night looking at parts diagrams for your whatever the first five or six digits of your VIN are all evening they have down to nuts and bolts on the parts breakdowns and very many of them but like I say plastics feel good accessories and all that kind of stuff hold off on that for 6 months these cars are not keepers you're going to go out and buy all this nonsense in about 6 weeks from now you'll be back here talking about your engine shaking and it's about to blow up or similar so let's wait on that stuff if you can manage to do that save up your pennies wherever you're working you're going to need them for this vehicle if this is going to be something you're thinking you're keeping I can assure you of that you're talking about what it took to get the car wait till you find out what it takes to try and keep the car then talk about all of that

 

see here:search

 

Bam!!!

 

Welcome....
After market plastic replacement is OK. Try to stick to OEM parts for the mechanical stuff. (ie. spark plugs, water pumps, ect..)

Hope this helps....

 

Used to be parts.toyota.com had usable parts diagrams. So they took that site down and put up autoparts.toyota.com, which doesn't. But to make up for that, it does have paragraphs of useless AI-spewed SEO text in all the places where you might look for parts descriptions.

 

With only 83,674 miles on it? Depending on what you paid, it's a good deal.
Change the oil every 5000 miles!
Do you mostly drive in the city or highway or combo?
Some will scare you with head gasket failures. And yes it it an issue, depending on your driving habits.
Usually after about 150,000 or more miles. If you keep an eye out for it, you can catch it early and only
need to replace the gasket.
Oil burning is also an issue, but with 5000 mile oil changes you can greatly reduce it.
You could try using the Valvoline Restore and Protect oil. It's "supposed" to get rid of the sludge.
It hasn't worked for me. But, if you use it early, like on your engine, it "might" prevent, or extent the mileage
before the oil rings clog.

Enjoy the car! Mine has 370,000 plus miles on it. Replaced the head gasket at 301,000 miles.

 

This site still has the practical diagrams, and often the best prices as well:

https://www.amayama.com/en/genuine-catalogs/epc/toyota-japan/prius/ZVW30/226646/body/5102

Yeah, fanatics…, anyway: head gasket failure is a tediously regular phenomena, around 150k miles. There’s a few misguided firebrands about that advocate a full cleaning of the EGR (Exhaust Gas Recirculation) system, including intake manifold, at least every 50k, apparently to avoid this.

There’s more info in the top two links in my signature (on a phone turn it landscape to see signatures).

 

i wouldn't go that far. you could get lucky, and we have no idea what percentage of gen 3 develop hg and brake actuator problems.
do your best to maintain it properly and hope for the best. i think asrdogman presented it well.

 

On here, you mostly here the negative. More people complain then give praise.

 

IF HG & EGR issues are most likely to crop up in the neighborhood of, say, 150K miles, or even if one is pessimistic, 50K miles, then why should I worry about it when my 2010 Prius has under 40K miles? Sounds like I have some time.

 

You should, especially if you aren’t putting much mileage on it currently.
Only concern might be can very little mileage cause egr clogging.
@Mendel Leisk would be the expert on that

 

The EGR issue is clogging up with carbon, which happens gradually. It's multi-facetted:

Even a light coat of carbon on the internal radiator of the EGR cooler, at the beginning of the circuit, even before it significantly reduces flow, will reduce it's ability to cool the exhaust gas. Then as the carbon increses, it reduces flow rate more significantly.

Next inline is the EGR valve, it clogs with carbon, affecting its flow rate, ability to open/close, and might also increase the amount of action it has to do, prematurely wearing a rut in an internal component, defeating its efficacy.

Next is the EGR pipe over to the intake manifold, which has a central gallery tube running across (from cyl 4 to 1), and smalll capillary passages, one per cylinder. These capillaries are very clog prone, and the one feeding cylinder 1 tends to be first to fully clog.

Cleaning it all, say at least every 50k miles, will keep the system operating more or less as it should. Not cleaning, the system very gradually goes from effective to useless and detrimental, engine temp climbs, in an unbalanced manner, with cylinder one being the first to be completely starved of exhaust gas.

The head gasket compromises happen just as gradually. Doing nothing till you start getting cold start shakes, say around 150k miles, and then cleaning the EGR system, is about 100k miles to late.

 

So, do it at 50K miles, which is a safe/low enough mileage level?

 

You shouldn't even worry about it at all.
Have you changed the 2 coolants? Changed the oil/filter every 5000 miles?
You drive very little, no reason to worry about it at all....

Beware of the fearmongers...

 

Whatever the maintenance schedule says, that's what gets done. Plus, checks of fluids, tires, all the normal wear things. I'm not worried, and I don't see the need to spend $1K (or more) at the moment, if it can be helped, and I think it can be helped.