u/Confident-Award2631

My hood will not close with oil catch mounted in the conventional location beside the inverter

I cleaned out the whole egr system, intake manifold, throttle body and replaced the fuel injectors because I had broken mine when I took them off to clean. Before I did all this, I suspected that I had a bad head gasket but I have done numerous combustion leak tests and they have always come back negative. Also, my coolant level was never below its low line (slightly above) and I do not know what It was at when I first got the car. It is a 2011 with 150,000 at the time of purchase so I assume the head gasket has probably already been replaced. Coolant does not look dirty nor does the oil and I've never has problems with it losing oil, it's always been perfect. After getting everything back together and starting the car, it did the notorious death rattle but I suspect that it was because my fuel lines were empty and it took time for enough fuel to get through the injectors, no white smoke appeared from the exhaust either. Now it does not do the death rattle but its idle is rough, visibly vibration in the engine that I can feel in the car from the steering wheel. At first I though harmonic balancer but visually it has no wobble. When I cleaned the intake manifold, there was definitely more to clean out of egr ports but I decided to reinstall because water was flowing through all of the ports... non of them were clogged. My thought is obviously bad combustion. maybe the denso fuel Injectors I got were fake? or maybe the intake manifold is not getting enough air through it for the cylinders to have equal pressure? Any suggestions would be helpful. It's been a bit of whirlwind trying to figure out this car.

Cleaned up the egr and intake manifold, replaced pcv and changed gaskets on manifold, egr, and fuel injectors. Got car started up, fuel leaking out from 2 injectors. Dealership said they need new o rings even though I just replaced them. I got new o rings and the same 2 fuel injectors are loose no matter which port on the fuel rail I put them into. Why are they not sealing?

Disconnected inverter wires to get to egr system more easily (didn't really help) and when I drove it today (despite the fact that it was leaking fuel from the fuel rail because I didn't seat a fuel injector properly and I had it towed to the dealership just to make sure nothing is majorly wrong) it said "check hybrid system." battery was still running and was getting perfect gas mileage (again, despite the fact that it was leaking a ton of fuel by the time I stopped) but the power flow dash screen wasn't showing any movement between wheels engine and battery. Also, neither sport or eco mode were an option which suggests to me that it's the inverter especially because I did disconnect and reconnect it. I accidentally broke a bolt on one of the inverter wires that just holds the wirese themselves in place (not the bus bars), it was a really hot day and I accidentally over torqued them obviously. I don't think that is the issue though, all of the bus bars are connected and the wiring on the side of the inverter that connects to the computer was put back as well

Any Ideas why this could be happening??

the car has also not been driven in a month and I had to recharge to 12v battery to get it to start.

I drive a 2011 ct200h. I’ve had it for about two years now and hadn’t had any engine problems until sometime this past winter. One time I went to start it up and got the famous press knock/rattle. No check engine light came on, I assumed it was just connected to the slight rocking forward the car naturally does when starting and since the car wasn’t shaking aggressively I didn’t think it was a misfire. It didn’t again a few times and again I thought it was just something loose that wasn’t part of the engine, again no check engine light came on.

Recently I’ve gotten more comfortable under the hood and when it did it this past month, I decided do some research. I planned to do an entire engine tear down and head gasket replacement. First though, I just finished cleaning egr system, intake manifold, and am going to install a catch can. I figured before I take the whole the appart (which I plan to do anyways just to replace head gasket with a better one and replace pistons and rings with updated 2014 ones, that I should actually do a head gasket test to know if the replacement is actually urgent.

I’m curious to know if anyone who has blown a head gasket on these earlier models would get a check engine light when it would knock on cold starts? I don’t think the problem is that bad, if it is a blown head gasket, because it’s only done it five times in the past 8 months, the coolant and oil have both been completely clean too. Again, because the check engine light hasn’t come on nor has it ever over heated, I’m wondering if it’s actually a blown head gasket or if it could’ve been the egr being backed up (it was so backed up I couldn’t even see the valve when I took it off, just a pile of soot). I’ve read that a backed up egr alone can cause that noise because of the reduced pressure getting through to the intake.

Either way, I am going to do a test to make sure. Like I said I’m planning on taking the whole thing apart anyways at some point but if it’s not actually blown I’ll probably wait a while.