Red Triangle/Oil Plug

I'd chalk it up to some rotten neighborhood kids having fun at your safety and expense.

In response to your muffler noise and smell, the 5/20 service rebuilt your emissions assembly. It'd be impossible for them to have accidentally loosened the oil plug.

 

And so how many miles were driven with the oil plug missing and the oil light on and the all this hullabaloo in Albany New York I imagine quite a few miles and you didn't wind up with a new engine boy you are lucky that's all I have to say about that Make sure that oil plug gets back in there and new one it's tight I can't imagine kids playing but hey I guess That's not playing

 

Something not adding up here. Could it be the oil FILL CAP that was missing?

if the oil drain plug was missing and you ran the engine at all, you’d have more problems than needing an occasional top up.

 

my conclusion would be to sell it and buy a new car

 

the oil light doesn't come on until it is too late in most instances

 

I'm still at a loss as to how the car would even run, with the oil drain bolt missing, which equals zero oil in the engine.

 

exactly, a long standing toyota failure

 

i'm just concerned that there is engine damage, but it is possible that you got lucky, and it drained out in the parking lot. if you're burning that much oil, keep a close eye on the level. for oil consumption, it is better to track miles than days.

 

Fill it up with the right oil drive the h a l e out of it and see what you got That's all you can do The one NZ is pretty stout little engine I mean you can't be running around with no oil in it right regular but given what happened here it might pull through and if it does then bingo got nothing you got your car and nothing happening and that's a good thing so just see what happens seems like that what you're going to do anyway or you've already done that and you're driving the car If it's not rattling knocking smoking up a storm generally not happy with life then seems like you're good to go It's much cheaper to keep her than it is anything else especially this model engines are cheap they're plentiful etc.

 

Yeah I was thinking along those lines too.

One gotcha I've found, actually with some Honda drain bolt washers, is the compressible coating was too compressible. I would torque it to spec, then at next oil change found it virtually finger-tight. From then on I asked for straight aluminum (no coating) washers, which they also had.

 

Just for the benefit of others who may have the triangle light and happen to find this thread in a search, if you talk to any mechanic who tells you "oh, that's about the hybrid battery" or "oh, that's about X", or "you can drive like this but not like this" just because the triangle light is on, find another mechanic.

The triangle light only tells you the car's hybrid-vehicle control computer (pretty much the orchestra conductor for the car) has something it wants to tell you about, which will have a trouble code, and there are a couple hundred of those. Some of them even have to do with the battery. Many are about other things entirely. Some can indicate big $$$$ problems and some can be pretty trivial.

Any mechanic who can tell you "oh, that's X", just because you said the triangle lit up, must be psychic. For non-psychics, the thing to do when that lights up is read the trouble code(s).