Well, I bought a gas cap thinking that would help, and I've tried taking it out and tightening it again. I do notice that there is a right and wrong way to do it, but I still get this ****ing check engine light happening and I am getting sick of it. I went to O'Reilly's and he says this could be a charcoal canister leak, valve something or other and some sensor crap that all sounds ridiculously expensive. I'm getting to a point that I'm gonna sell my car already and quit my job and find a new life because I'm tired of car issues. I need new tires (as you can see from the post I just made less than 24 hours ago) and now I need to do all this..granted I've yet to go back to my trusted mechanic but still. If we can't rely on Toyota to give us quality products, who the eff can we rely on? That's right, nobody.

 

I think you need more cowbell.

 

Can you be more specific?

 

What year and how many miles?

 

I picked up this 2009 Toyota Camry Hybrid about 4-5 months ago when it had only about 34,000 miles on it. The original owner drove it intermittently, probably only on weekends or something. I believe he might've been a pretty old guy. He appeared to have maintained it very well though, as he did oil changes, tire rotations, tire replacements and everything like that ahead of time. He got a new water pump installed from Toyota, probably under warranty.

Now it has about 40,000 miles on it. I had someone back into my car already while I was parked at their house, and mostly the damage seemed cosmetic as far as I know and I had her insurance/collision people take car of the damage and repair it. The car did have some cosmetic damage to it before I got it - there is a ding and paint chipping on the back side for example. It's not particularly noticeable most of the time unless you look for it. Some things seem to vary a lot when I'm driving such as the MPG. At random, doing almost nothing different that I'm aware of, it will drop to low 30s. Then there are times it picks up and gets above 40 all the time doing the same routes. The regenerative braking sound used to be pretty noticeable at times, now it's a whisper. And like I said with the check engine light. That's about all I can think of.

 

If your gas cap is tight, your most likely issue is the EVAP purge solenoid. After that, you need to have someone with a smoke machine test it to find the leak. The solenoid is an easy fix, the smoke test will show you where the leak is and depending on the location, it could be an easy or hard fix.

The first thing to do is grab your multi meter and check that solenoid out.

 

I'm taking it to the mechanic tomorrow, but I think I will mention that to them. Hopefully this will be a cheap fix. Appreciate it.

 

You were close...unfortunately, the problem is the canister itself, which is pretty expensive no matter how you cut it.

 

Are you sure it's the canister? That will require the gas tank to be removed. The purge solenoid is under the hood near the throttle body. Did your mechanic hook it to a smoke machine to find the leak? Just wondering as it is not very common to have the canister crack.

 

Well, he said there's a vent that opens and shuts and is electronically controlled, but malfunctioning in some way. Hence more emissions, more fuel vapors. I'm pretty sure he was talking about the canister itself, and if we order the part from Toyota, it'd be $1000 and more for labor. They did do a smoke test to determine this.