Why does there seem to be a serious oil burning problem?

what the mileage?

i have never noticed a ton of posts regarding gen2 oil burning

gen3 seems to start with a clogged egr, and possible pistons and rings that aren't up to snuff. but there are plenty of high mileage gen 3's that don't burn oil, so who knows?

i'm sure you will find similar complaints on any car site

 

If a car burns oil at 100k I’d be concerned but over 200k I wouldn’t be surprised if it did burn oil.

 

my daughters '08 doesn't burn any at 130k

 

is she selling it lol

 

Terry, did your Prius lack power on acceleration or at highway speeds. If it did I would agree with you but if not I don't. Then again fuel filters used to be considered part of routine maintenance but I don't recall fuel filters mentioned in the maintenance schedule. On old cars plugged fuel filters were common and they would hardly accelerate.

 

it's at the local gas station now with a for sale sign. she picked up a suburb impreza for winter driving in the catskills

 

I was going to say, and it's already been said, but the reoccurring problem does seem to be with the Gen 3.
And my observation is ALL engines will at some point start to burn oil..and various rates, on various timelines.
If you have a higher mileage vehicle and it's NOT burning oil, just keep doing what you're doing and consider yourself lucky.

As far as tying specific maintenance behaviors to specific outcomes?
Far too big a grouping.
As with everything mechanical, the better you maintain the better your reliability is likely to be.
However, Oil Burning seems to come into play, prematurely for a lot of owners of Gen 3, regardless of Oil Changing routine.

 

How did you replace the fuel filter?

You quote a very high mileage then don't post what the mileage is.

If the fuel filter is blocked it would be lean alright so lean the car wouldn't run.

I don't remember anyone maybe one or 2 over 11 years ever changing the timing chain. What were you chasing?

Engine oil flush is never needed for a car whose oil is maintained correctly. Haven't ever used that stuff over 40+ years of car ownership.

Lastly my suspicion on oil use is the engines are basically ruined if the car is 100% dealer serviced oil change. Dealer never checks it before the change to let the owner know they were a quart low on oil when they rolled in then they over fill it with the worlds crappiest oil. Owner drives away with an engine oil issue they were not aware of. Congratulating themselves they waited 2 hours and had a donut and had the mother ship check the car thereby eliminating any personal responsibility ever to whats going on under the hood.
Its a sweet sweet feeling how good I take care of my car lol.

Some people have never opened there hood ever.
Many post on here about an underhood noise problem and never even open the hood to check themselves. or they have had a check engine light on for a while or a RTOD and keep driving. if I see that I pull over. Those folks are guaranteed to blow there car up.

You do not get an ASE mechanic changing oil at the dealer. You get a minimum wage monkey who is trained to remove dump bolt and filter dump oil and then hold the oil pump trigger. Rarely do they speak English in my observation.
If anyone who has there car dealer serviced doesn't believe me next time you get a change at the dealer let them take your car. 20 mins later go around the back of the building and find your car and see whats going on and talk to the oil change guy. The back of the building is where all the nasty oil vats are.

Always after an oil change let the car sit for a while and check the oil.

Its real simple to prevent #2 piston from taking a leave of absence in the block by routine oil level check.
Make sure the car has been off overnight as there is alot of oil in the vvt/vvt filter galley and takes a while to drain back for accurate measurement.

 

The amount is important in this discussion.

If the oil usage gradually increased a tiny bit every (pick a number, maybe 30,000 miles) and seems to increase after 100K miles........not a real "problem" as that is normal for almost all engines. And the fact that some don't seem to use any (or very little) does not necessarily mean that they all should do that.

OTOH, if there is a sudden and significant increase in the usage, then that might be worth worrying about.

 

The most important thing you can do for your car is maintain fluid levels and scheduled changing of fluids, every thing else comes second.

 

My 07 has a little over 245k on it and burns maybe half a quart every 500-1k miles. I experimented going up to a 10w30 to see if that resolved it, but still remained constant. Right now Im running M1 0w40 european formula since I had a surplus of it. My CEL is on due to the cat sensor but never really investigated it fully... My mechanic is the master prius tech at the dealer by my house and he claimed certain years of the gen 2 (2007 being one of them) consume more oil than others. I mainly use it for highway driving, so I figured thats probably a major factor in my case.