DIY Oil change

Yeah,

You can use an oil drain pump to suck it out of the dipstick tube.

Easier, it would be easier to drive one side up on a curb with one side on the road, use a shallow drain pan, remove the oil drain plug with a 14mm wrench, and drain the crankcase.

Be sure to add new oil, before driving the car off the curb.

 

Excellent advice.

To the OP, if you can reach under the car & effectively work on it without putting it on jackstands, more power to you and more time saved. That said, shouldn't the idiots in the service department be fixing their mistake instead of you?

 

If I recall from prior posts, that part of the world is not so enamoured of 20w oils. In fact, I printed out the listing from someone else in Singapore. Let me just dig around for it, here...

They use: 0w-20, 5w-20, 5w-30, and 10w-30. Also, 15w-40 and 20w-50. The chart has F* -20* to over 100* using 0w-20, 5w-20, and 5w-30. 10w-30 picks up at 0*F. 15w-40 starts at 10*F. 20w-50 starts at 20*F.

It shocked a lot of folks when it was presented, and I haven't heard a "Gotta Have 0w-20 or your car will blow up!!" since.

+1 on using a curb to get the car up in the air. If you're small you might not even need to do that. However, the big problem is getting the drain pan under the sump with enough room to reach the plug with the wrench or your hand. The oil filter might cause some trouble with that, too. A curb might be the best bet.

 

This is the same as the diagram in my manual. I'd never heard of this 0W-20 obsession before PriusChat (though I can see it in the US manual since the PDFs are available online).

Mine is accompanied by this text:

Our Service & Warranty book specifies oil and filter changes to be conducted at every service, ie. every 6 months or 10,000km (~6200 miles).

Obviously we have a different climate - there's an extremely high probability that my c will never experience temperatures as cold as 20°F in its lifetime. 10°F is around the record low temperatures recorded in Australia outside my home state. In this state, other than one outlier our record lows are just below 0°F (-18°C) at a weather station up in the Australian alps.

Meanwhile, being equatorial, the lowest ever recorded temperature in Singapore was 19.4°C (66.9°F).

 

We'll be in the 60's this weekend. I think I'll put in some 50w and see what happens.

I'm sure it'll be exciting...not.

 

Doesn't the C use essentially the same engine as my 2G? (1NZ-FXE?) If so, I expect you can do lift-free oil changes since I have been doing them for years. That "feature" is almost as good as the fuel economy. You can't see the oil filter, but after 2 or 3 changes it will be committed to muscle memory. Reach 'n spin (270 degrees).

If I'm wrong, buy ramps. Ramps make this stuff trivial.

 

FUMOTO ENGINEERING

 

When I owned a sail boat, A few years ago I bought and "oil extractor"
It is an 8 qt. tank with a vacuum pump. You first pump the air out of the tank. Then you place a small tube down the dip stick tube. then turn a valve and wait 5 or 10 minutes while the oil gets sucked into the tank. All the work is done from above. THis method would be about the only way to go if you lived in an apartment

The best part is that when you are done you have the used oil inside a closed container that can even be turned upside down and can't spill. You can take the used oil to the re-cycle place in the same container.

On the boat the diesel engine was mounted an inch above the hull with zero hope of getting a wrench under the engine. Pulling the engine up meant using a crane through a hatch in the galley, so the "oil extractor" was the only way. But I kept it and now I can do an automotive oil change with no tools (unless the filter is stuck.)

A few boat owners would install an electric pump on the engine, then you can plumb the outlet to some convenient place. They would place a big plastic gas can under the outlet then flip a switch. I can't imagine anything easier then the electric oil change pump but never got around to installing one.

The little three cylinder diesel engine really did like to have it's oil changed. Blow-by gasses would contaminate the oil from fuel

(All that said, my Prius comes with 3 years of free maintenance. My dealer added the third year as an incentive. So I get the oil changed for free. Also My Ford truck is tall enough that I don't need ramps.)

 

I always use a pair of car ramps to gain access to the underside of my Prius. Once one the ramps, I can easily gain access to the drain plug and the oil filter.

BBCassidy

 

Same here for portable tire ramps but be careful driving off them. I have many a times had the ramps shoot out forward when backing off them.



You know, spinning wheels, low coefficient of friction, transfer of energy = America's Funniest Home Video opportunity.

 

Note since the oil plug faces out the right (passengers) side you want to drive the left drivers side up on the curb so you drain as much of the oil as possible. And yes, you shoukld change the oil filter as well.

 

Perrhaps more exciting than you know. If you use conventional oil, non synthetic, you will deny lubrication to many of the tight toleranced clearances and shorten engine life as well as making it hard to run.
BTW you should use synthetic oils because they have a much greater resistance to 'tearing' in thin sheets; when oil sheets tear the surfaces will contact instead of being separated. Tearing is demonstrated by the reaction of real sheets to being pulled apart on opposing sides. And in actual lubricvation thats exactly what iyt looks like when the oil film begins to tear. Those tight toledrances result in thed thinnest films so you need the lighter viscosity but very strong lubricants to address the need.