How long did you wait for first oil change?

I'll be long gone and pushing up daisies before the axel fluid or tranny goo needs to be changed. I'll save the money for my daily breakfast at Mickey D's.

I'll put air in the tires when they swoon. And change the engine "earl" every June. And get a new air filter once in a blue moon...

And that's it. I'm sick of worrying about car maintenance.

 

I'm sure that works very well, but so does a simple hex key (with hydraulic jack handle as extension, if needed), with less clutter and expense. Torque measurement is not critical on those plugs, unless one has grossly bad mechanical judgement (like the quickie-oil-change places that leave drain plugs loose, cross-thread them, or strip the threads). Without a torque wrench, you can push or pull with a force equal to the desired torque divided by the effective length of your tool.

 

Sure, and you can check tread depth with a coin too, I know, lol.

On Amazon USA:

 

When you build an engine, the bearing surfaces are lubricated with various types of bearing grease. This grease mixes with the motor oil, so, yes, I'd dump it at 3,500 or 5,000.

Will more frequent oil changes improve engine longevity? In my opinion, YES. A Prius has no problem making it past 100,000, but if you want a 200,00 or 300,000 Prius, change the oil at 5,000 when possible and change the transaxle fluid with Toyota WS at 30,000 and every 60,000 after that (30/90/150/210, etc). You don't have to be religious about the oil changes if you shoot for 5,000 mi intervals and one goes to 6,500 your engine won't explode.

Another often overlooked item is that the brake caliper pins should be re-lubricated every 30,000.

The tranny and brake pin services aren't mentioned in the Maintenance schedule.

I've owned Prius since 2010 and following them all this time. Turns out that they are incredibly reliable and the least expensive to maintain of all cars. (Wow!). Taxi cab drivers routinely reach the 300,000 mi taxi can limit. My 2012 Plug-in is almost like new at 100,000 miles. It's quite remarkable, really.

 

Well the brake pin lube is sorta in the schedule, part of brake inspection. But yeah, the Toyota instruction in Repair Manual is pretty disjointed.



Yesterday was engine oil and filter, and transaxle fluid change for me. I've settled on 6 months for the engine oil, tri-yearly for the transaxle. Except, I may just pack it in on the transaxle, it was looking very clean, we're only putting on about 8000 km's yearly now.

 

Whatever happened to those places where they let you pump out the waste oil through the dipstick tunnel and tell with your own oil once you had changed your filter. That was a great system from the 70s.

Scratch a pattern on the filter with a screwdriver or some such. If the scratch is still there after the oil change you'll know for sure.

 

Unfortunately that doesn't work: the oil filter housing is permanent; only the paper element is changed, starting with 2010 model year. Commendable in that it reduces disposable material, but hard to verify it's been changed. Not to mention if there's even a filter in there.

 

i don't do any maintenance either, but i hope to trade in before pushing up daisies.

 

I find it ironic that Toyota has gone from oil filter cartridges to replaceable elements while my heating oil vendor has switched from replaceable elements to oil filter cartridges.

JeffD

PS. I haven't changed the oil yet, only at 1600 miles.

 

My next big "maintenance project" will be reupholstery with Katzkins. My children were pretty hard on the fabric, so it has a few stains, but the rest of the car is like new. I've convinced myself I can do this. Replacing the steering wheel with a leather-covered wheel from a wrecked Prius turned out to be very easy and very worthwhile.

 

I've had mixed (not perfect, but not bad either) results with this stuff, on our son's car:




TURTLE WAX® PERFORMANCE PLUS™ OXY POWER OUT!® UPHOLSTERY CLEANER 18 fl.oz.


The interior was a light tan colour, including upholstered arm rests, which had settle into burnished grime over the years. The applicator is is kinda useless though; I just put some on, then move it around with my own utensils, a toothbrush, terrycloth. It did lighten the tone a little noticeably in one or two instances: if you're cleaning a spot, best to kind of "feather out".

 

I don't know if we all got this. I have some kind of free maintenance for a year or two. Oil changes at 10,000 miles. I'm on my 3 change by then, I don't waist my time using these things. My guess there is a Toyota plan to try selling you something to off set the cost of the change.

 

9750 for the first and ever 10 thereafter . I'm following the manual

 

For all you, do it your self guys like me. I found me home made wood ramps that worked on the old prius were to low with the 2016. I could have added some more blocking. But decided to get the plastic ones from the auto parts store, $50. They have the same one in Walmart about $10 cheaper. Worth the change, they worked much better than what I had. they have a level area at the top and a stop so you won't go over the end. I do 5K changes with Mobil 1

Question, for a while you could get any Mobil 1 with a filter and save a lot of $. Now I see it's only certain ones, not synthetic 0-20. Any one where there are coupons or how to buy at a discount price?

 

my 2016 Prius, and all my new vehicles that I've purchased new, I do my first oil change very early. Yeah, it's probably not necessary, but I do mine initial oil change at around 1,000 miles, than I do every 5,000 from then on. 5000, 10000, 15000, and so on. I always use the recommended oil suggested by the manufacturer. I'm very anal about my maintenance, and do my own.

 

With a car so mechanical sound I want to be very aggressive in keeping fresh fluids in '17 Prius 2. For me that means the first OC was at 1750 miles. That is because these engines are so tight there will be metal to metal ware when it is that new. After that up to 4000 more miles and then the one from the dealer that is free.
If you look at the OEM filter its about the size of your fist, and it does not have any end support for the paper pleats. Very marginal I my opinion. That is why I use the more expensive Mobil 1 filter.
I will do a gravity flush of the brake fluid every five years unless the fluid turns dark. The same for the two cooling systems and be sure to use distilled water. NO tap water please.
Probably change the eCVT fluid at about 60000.
With the EPA rules that take into account the total petroleum products use, the car makers all seem to push the fluids to or maybe past their limits. Remember the sludge problem Toyota had a few ago.

 

Toyota coolant comes pre-deluted with water, takes care of that.

 

With brake-fluid, check what TOYOTA recommends. With ALL my previous cars it was scheduled for every 2 years, as it breaks down. It's (unless they've changed the formulation - at least in the past) hygroscopic and once it begins to break down will degrade the brake components from the inside, causing costly damage to brake lines, calipers, master cylinders etc.

I'd have thought that 1750 miles was much too soon for engine oil - bearing in mind that the ICE didn't drive anything like that far. New oils are designed to go much further than that - Mercedes runs it's oil for 25,000km.

 

Translation:
Mercedes oil change interval is a little more than 15k miles.

 

For the steering wheel, buy a Wheelskin. It will make the car feel much better to drive. I did that to my Gen3 and the improvement was remarkable.