timing Chain

Yes I pulled the dipstick and I blot it on some like filter paper that's white then I can see the blackness a little bit of particulate matter smell how bad it smells how quick it lights with a lighter or flame and so on and in the morning I'll unscrew the 3600 large oil filter drain the mess out for a half a quart of pour through oil and let it run through and pick up what's on the bottom of the pan and let it sit open for about 30-40 minutes then drop fresh 5 30 and a new 3600 filter and off to the races if you will.

 

I see, so you waste a half a quart to clean it out?

I was told that because the Prius runs on electric battery about half the time, you can go twice as long before changing the oil.

 

Husband tales.. yes I waste 3/4 of a quart at change to pour thru.. the 1 NZ our engines are more like reg ice car more so than mewer model's. So this model we can treat more like a Corolla than a hybrid when dealing with the engine part of it.

 

NZ? Sorry, I don't understand your 2nd sentence

 

1NZ that is the engine in mine and yours car that we're driving that you just had worked on.

 

Toyota has these funny engine designations. So the engine in a gen 1 or gen 2 Prius, or in a Prius c, is a 1NZ, the engine in a gen 3 or 4 Prius is a 2ZR, in a gen 5 it's M20A, and sometimes we throw those terms around on PriusChat to keep things interesting.

Then there's Tom using speech-to-text a lot of the time, so stuff comes out 1 NZ instead of 1NZ, just to be a little extra mysterious.

 

Pushing the oil change intervals on any car is not a great idea. Even the manufacturer's suggested intervals are suspect - they are designed to get the car to the end of the warranty period, not to let the motor run for 400K miles. How often you need to change it will also depend on how the car is driven and it may not always be obvious. Days on the highway is not as hard on the car as tons of short trips. If you want to be analytical about it pick a good quality oil and stick with it, and send an oil sample off to be analyzed at, let's say, 5000 miles - if it tests "like new", push it to up to 7500, and so forth. Even if you find that way that you're good to 10000 miles you will still want to check the oil periodically, just in case something goes south during that long interval, and the car starts burning or leaking a significant amount of oil, or the oil is suddenly filthy or full of metal particles.

On mine I change the oil at 5000 miles or one year. I'm more concerned with keeping the rings from sticking than the cost of extra oil changes.

Be aware that these cars start to burn oil at 125K or 150K, not always a lot, but enough you have to keep an eye on the dipstick.

 

Thanks for the tips!