newbie: "maintenance due soon"

You can download manuals from the Toyota Owners Website by registering with your VIN. You might even see some previous maintenance records as long the previous owner recorded them. This would also be a good time to change the owner’s registration to be able to receive Safety Updates/Recalls when they are published.

Now on to your specific question: Not sure what the RAV4 maintenance schedule is, but for the Prius, Toyota recommends “maintenance” every 5,000 miles; so, they have implemented the “maintenance due soon” reminder to come on every 5,000 miles since the light was last reset. This is a pure miles counter, there is no “smart” oil life monitor, and it can be reset from the steering wheel buttons.

The problem you have is that you do not know what was done the last time the light was reset. Perhaps you have a CARFAX report with the most recent oil change. Often a selling dealer will do an oil service when they put the car up for sale. If you can determine when the oil was last changed, you can ignore the light for now as long as you are within Toyota’s recommended oil change intervals.

In addition to oil changes, Toyota recommends several other checks plus tire rotation on 5,000 mile intervals. You really should read the Maintenance Schedule pamphlet for a full description of the recommended maintenance items and their timings.

 

Go to Toyota Tech Info website (just google that) click on “manuals” tab, answer a few questions re your car, and you can view/download pdf of your manuals, including "Warranty and Maintenance Booklet", which summarizes the Toyota USA required maintenance.

it’s event-by-event format, totally useless if you want to get overall picture, say frequency of the various maintenance items. I cobbled a spreadsheet summary, helps with that (attached).

Note, besides what Toyota USA specs for maintenance, there are a few extra items worth considering, but maybe that's for another discussion. Suffice to say, for fourth gen, I'd also consider:

tri-yearly brake fluid change
occasional transaxle fluid change

Also note, some of what Toyota USA specs for maintenance, I would take with a grain-of-salt. Cabin/Engine air filter changes in particular: I wouldn't slavishly follow the schedule for these, rather inspect and change if warranted.

And there's other items worth considering for periodic replacement, not covered: wiper blades for example. Some like to also replace the 12 volt battery every 4~5 years, regardless of it's condition.

to answer your initial question: the “maintenance required soon” means just that, “something” is required soon, could be just tire rotation, or oil change, whatever. FWIW Canadian spec Toyotas don’t have this alert, we manage.

 

Not an oil change probably......but tire rotation at 5K miles.

Tires recommended for rotation at 5K.
Oil change recommended from 7 to 10K.

I just ignore the "warning" until I get to about 7K and then
do rotation AND oil change at the same time.

 

If you've got snow tires on separate rims, tire rotations are when they are. I know, likely not a factor in California. Bottom line, some of this stuff you need to apply common sense.

 

Yes the maintenance warning starts notifications when we are within 500 miles of the 5,000 mile point. (Mine is letting me know now, too...got about 300 miles before it comes on for good after starting the car.)
I will do a tire rotation and change the oil and oil filter. Toyota mechanics are now seeing Gen 4 Toyota Prius' blowing head gaskets when folks only do oil changes every 10,000 miles and I don't need that expense/problem so I change our cars every 6-months or 5,000 miles, whichever comes first.

 

Toyota USA’s maintenance reminder glosses over the months, just counts miles. But their documentation says miles or months, whichever comes first. Common sense should be employed with that too: if you’re ultra low use. Case in point:

Toyota Canada tells me to change the oil and filter on our '10 every 8000 kms (5000 miles approx) or 6 months, whichever comes first. I've been doing this, but our yearly usage is down to about 3000 kms now. Yup...

Anyway, I've been (obviously) going by the months criteria, changing the oil in April and October. Last April I changed the oil as usual, updated the log book:

====
Thursday, October 6, 2022
kms: 95051
* changed engine oil and filter
* drained Oil Catch Cans, cleaned them out too
====
Wednesday, October 24, 2022
kms: 95297
* installed snow tires
(missed the take-off date)
====
Thursday, November 24, 2022
kms: 95672
* replace spark plugs
* Cleaned EGR components and intake manifold (last done in November of 2017)
* Replaced all gaskets at intake manifold
====
Monday, April 10, 2023
kms: 96417
* changed engine oil and filter
* drained Oil Catch Cans
(resolve to do only one oil changer per year from now on)
(oil catch cans should be ok for that interval too, with such low miles)
====

Took a look at the kms since last oil change, then resolved to stick to once a year, unless there's a significant increase in our use of the car, which isn't likely. So I'm skipping this October's oil change, let it slide till next April.

 

I commend your brand loyalty.
Here's a link (hopefully!) to your manuals - so now you have them.
Manuals & Warranties | Toyota Owners

Um.....sometimes.
Sometimes it's a chance for the dealer to recommend unnecessary maintenance to people who do not know which is which.

SO....
If I did it right I attached the Warranty and Maintenance Guide for your vehicle.
Starting on page 36 there is a short section on what maintenance is due for each periodicity (5,000 mi, 10,000 mi etc....)
I would strongly recommend that you compare the maintenance items in this schedule with your vehicle's mileage and decide what needs to be done asking specific questions in this forum and NOT TRUSTING ANYTHING that the dealership recommends ESPECIALLY if it is not on the maintenance schedule provided by the factory.

If I sound a little jaded about the whole dealership experience it is because we do not share the same brand loyalties.

There are exceptions to the maintenance items in the manual being the only one that should be done for your car, but they are rare.
Transmission fluid change is a good example, but there are pitfalls there as well!!!
If ANYONE mentions 'transmission' and 'flush' in the same breath, be polite to them but do not under any circumstances let them touch your car. It's actually not a transmission, CVT, or a transaxle - but everyone calls it that anyway.
It's actually a power-split device, IIRC.
I also strongly recommend you adopt a 5,000 mile oil change interval and a 1,000 mile oil CHECK interval - ESPECIALLY for a used vehicle.

Someone in this forum who knows more than I do, which is most all of them, might be able to tell you how to look up your vehicle's service history online, but take this with a large dose of sodium!
MY vehicle maintenance history would be blank because I never allow my dealer to do maintenance on my car.

Regardless...
Read the manual and the guides and explore the G4 (2016-2022 Prius) posts in this forum.
Ask questions.

BT Dubs,
My sweet daughter is an educator.
I could not be more proud!
It's a noble profession!!

Best.

 

And you somehow think that is the cause ??
Dirty oil causes head gaskets to deteriorate ???????

 

I have got to call you out on this, ColoradoBoo. There’s no need to push your “religion” on new Prius owners. I have been participating on PriusChat daily since 2008 and have owned Gen 2, two Gen 3 and my current 2016 Gen 4. Gen 2 used “dino” oil and required 5K oil changes, but since Gen 3 when Toyota switched to 0W-20 oils (and by extension full synthetic), the oil change interval increased to 10K for “normal” use situations.

I adopted the 10K oil change strategy beginning with my Gen 3s and on the Gen 4 have done seven 10K oil changes in the seven years since new without a hint of any issues. I sent my 60K oil sample to Blackstone and received a glowing report of engine metals in the sample.

While “blown head gasket” posts in Gen 4 have started to appear lately, I don’t think there is any consensus—especially from “Toyota mechanics”— that 10K oil changes are the reason. In fact, most engine issues related to low engine coolant and engine overheating have been misdiagnosed as “blown head gasket” when, in fact, have been caused by a coolant leak in the heat exchanger in the exhaust pipe.

Better to warn new owners to watch the engine coolant levels, white smoke in the tailpipe, poor cabin heating performance and engine overheating related to the heat exchanger coolant leak than some dubious warnings about 10K oil changes.

 

Toyota USA spec for gen 2 is 5W30, no mention of synth vs conventional. Both are available in that weight.

Yeah the coolant losses in 4th gen, due to leaks in exhaust heat recovery system, have led to head gasket failure misdiagnosis. Sometimes it does end up toasting head gasket, due to enough coolant loss, continuing to drive in that condition.

regarding oil change interval, even if 10k oil changes are not doing in the head gasket, I’ll stick to 5k, for various reasons.

 

About the same time in the product's life cycle that they started appearing for the G3's -eh?

I was merciless about the appearance of the G4 when they came out, but I've always given them due credit for being very reliable on the front nine. That having been said - there is no way that I would recommend a 10K OCI for a vehicle - especially a USED vehicle that has a known history with head gasket failure that is directly linked to oil deposits in the EGR loop.
The Prius has a very small sump and a very long OCI and the 'experts' there are sticking with both of them....in some markets.
Back when my company adopted G2's and G3's they stuck with the 5K periodicity that they use for all fleet vehicles and we have a zero-percent head gasket failure rate for probably a dozen cars nearly all of which have over 200k miles.
I logged 200,000 miles between two of them and both are still in service with well over 200.000 miles each.

That and the other regular posters here that follow the same maintenance philosophy is a small sample size in a million Prius pool - so 'trusting the experts' might be the wiser thing to do in this case.
Throwing accusations of religious proselytizing is over egging the pudding.
The OP may be a new Prius owner but they are at the very least a two time Toyota owner and the victim of.........a head gasket failure from the last one.

Toyota has a history with this.
THAT is why they used to define 'excessive oil use' as 1quart every 600miles.....and who knows?

MAYBE they still do.

 

Mendel, I would agree with you, but now that I seldom get to 5K miles before 6 months, I do my oil changes at 1 year intervals. The new synthetic oil does not degrade with time as rapidly as "Dino" oil.

JeffD

 

For a Prime owner or anyone else who logs very low annual mileages with these cars that is EXACTLY the right thing to do (in my never-to-be-humbled opinion!)

Warranty and Maintenance GUIDES are just that.
OWNERS are expected use them to tailor their maintenance to their own unique needs.

In nearly ALL cases oil (and other fluid) CHECK intervals are much more predictive than oil CHANGE intervals for longevity.

Toyota used to recommend 1 month or 1,000 miles, and that's probably a good place to start.

YMMV.

 

Is there a way to permanently disable the reminder?

 

Not as long as the mothership makes so much money from them....