Maint Req'd Light. Seriously Toyota.

It's okay, it'll encourage him to get away from hotmail's
worthless pos excuse for "service".
.
_H*

 

Maybe he should ask for his money back?

 

Same with us Canucks!

 

Pat

You realize you're never going to get laid *ever* again, right? Reminds me of that one scene from the canceled show "Firefly" when Wash said something a bit off to his warrier woman wife, Zoe. Zoe replied

"Remember that sex we were planing on ever having again?"

Seriously, the Canadian Prius and FJ also delete the maint reminder. Although if the light is *too* easy to reset, you end up doing what a lot of rental agencies here do: they reset the reminder, over and over, and an unlucky person buys a 2 year old car with 20,000-50,000km on the factory oil

 

...Solution: Place a small piece of black tape over the light - will never bother you again.:blah:

 

My gripe with the light is that it comes on at the factory recommended mileage, not when the car's oil is actually in need of changing. I always run synthetic oil and I'll be pushing mine to 8,000 miles on this change before it gets replaced.

If I ran conventional oil the light would make more sense.

 

Right. That second X-chromosome turns us all into idiots. I guess it's just pure luck that I always knew when my Camry needed an oil change even though there was no dashboard light to tell me to get it done.

 

so the light means nothing more than change your oil? does it ever have ANY other meaning? how often does it come on?

P.S. my first light came on today. bought it uesd and dont have a book.:eyebrows:

 

Ahh but you have to look deeper into a given subject to understand why things are what they are.

For example: What was one of the major embarrassments for Toyota over the last 15 years? The oil-sludge brouhaha. It basically boiled down to some owners having problems with sludge buildup and Toyota saying that they didn't do the maintenance properly. 'Yes I did, No you didn't, Yes I did,........' He said/She said. It was settled out of court.

But to avoid such problems again. Toyota now reminds you and me and the rest of the buying population to do our maintenance on time. That seems innocent.

But things are not always what they seem. At 4500 mi the warning light blinks and goes out. 4600, 4800, 4900 but at 5000 mi it comes on and stays on...........DING!!!! At which time a signal is sent to an event-recorder box in the vehicle, which essentially says 'Maintenance Due'. When the maintenance is finished the trip meter ( that's what it really is - a 3rd trip meter ) is reset back to 0.......DING!!!!! At which time a signal is sent to an event-recorder box in the vehicle which says, maintenance done on schedule ( or maybe, Just maybe maintenance NOT DONE ON SCHEDULE ).

Read your manual. You have this event recorder box ( black box on an airplane ) that records all kinds of data inputs from the electronics.
'No Officer my brakes just failed I pumped and pumped and they never worked. That's why I slammed into this showroom.'
'OK, Ma'am we'll just download the data from your black box and see if there were any brake inputs at all. If there were many as you say then you are free to go and to sue Toyota. If not then you are under arrest for reckless driving.'

On the face of it the 'MAIN REQD' seems like a friendly reminder. It's actually them protecting themselves against future oil-sludge claimants.
'We're very sorry but your event-recorder shows that you skipped the 25000 mi interval and actually didn't change your oil from 48,000 miles to 80,000 miles. The history is all here in your vehicle. Your claim is denied.'

 

Ahhh see prior post. Aussies didn't sue Toyota for oil-sludge problems. It was US citizens. So it's US drivers that Toyota is protecting against. Our lawyer-driven adversarial society makes these situations a necessity to protect the financial health of a company.

One of the most hated groups in Prius-world is this group: ConsumerAffairs.com: Knowledge is Power! Consumer news, reviews, complaints, resources, safety recalls. Why? They are a bunch of maggots asking the dissatisfied ( and the ignorant ) to feed them with complaints so that they can investigate whether to open class action suits against wealthy companies.

 

(I'm not trying to bash the female gender here, but this is just simply the way things are.)
No, it's just that if I'm sure if you took a survey of male and female car owners, you'd find that the % of female car owners who are clueless is higher. A much larger % of women than men simply aren't interested in cars. I can tell you the latter is true from plenty of personal experience.

I knew of a girl who went >13K miles w/o changing the oil on (at the time new) Camaro because she didn't know that oil needed to be changed at all.

This is very much like the fact that most men don't care a great deal about clothing, fashion and shoes whereas many women couldn't care less about computers, football, cars, gadgets and home theater equipment.

 

You have no idea what you're talking about.

 

Gee thanks.

I'm serious. Go take a poll of a random sample of females and males of sufficient size. Find out how many: are interested in cars, are car enthusiasts, are into fashion and clothing, and are into home theater equipment.

Go into a independent garage or dealer's service department. Look around at the mechanics. What % of female mechanics are there?

The 13K mile w/o oil change Camaro girl told me herself. I'm not making up the story.

The % of car owners who are clueless about car maintenance amongst BOTH genders is clearly non-zero.

The light coming on every 5K miles seems somewhat sensible (as a means of preventing problems and lawsuits) due to Toyota's and other automaker's past history w/oil sludging lawsuits.

 

how eloquent of an answer!
ROTFL
would you care to elaborate why he has no idea what he is talking about?

 

That sounds like someone programmed it into your car's computer. There's a difference between the dash light (MAINT REQ'D) and a warning on the MFD... at least in the Prius. I can completely disable MFD reminders for service... don't know the exact procedure because I don't have the manual or car with me right now, but it's easy. Could be the same for you.

"MAINT REQ'D" is the oil change light, basically. Toyota recommends various other services based on the car's mileage, but yeah... oil change.

You didn't take a survey, so it's hardly appropriate to quote the hypothetical survey as evidence. Anecdotal evidence, stereotypes and personal bias are also not really appropriate "evidence."

And saying that "guys like cars" doesn't cut it because I'll gladly bet any amount of money that more men have ruined cars through lack of knowledge/skill in auto maintenance and repair than have women through automotive history.

 

I don't have a Prius, so I can't translate this directly over to it, but on the TCH: The MFD/MID (or Multi-Function/Information Display) is located in the normal instrument panel, under the speedometer where the odometer is normally situated. The MFD/MID shows Outside Temp/Cruising Range/Tank Avg/ECO Drive Level/ tripmeters/odometers using the DISP button on the steering wheel.

Any alerts also appear momentarily on the MID as text. Unfortunately, on the TCH, the MAINT REQ'D warning comes up as a high priority alert and overrides all other MID displays. (Until you remember what MAINT REQ'D means and how to clear it. Yeah, it's easy, but only appears every 5,000 miles, so it's not something that you see that often.)

What you may be referring to might be related to the Maintenance Calendar on the NAV display. I also use that, and (fortunately), it is not as much as an "in you face" alert.

I realize that I'm talking about the Camry Hybrid on a Prius site. At the time I was pointing out the differences between the two alerts / conditions.

 

More high-tech solution, but expensiver than tape: Black touchup paint over the offending light.

 

I am a car guy and I do all my own maintenance and repairs on all the vehicles I own, including alot of repairs for friends and family and I like the Toyota Maintenance required light. I do wish it was titled differently with something like Scheduled maintenance due. Its not so much that I need it for my car, but if my wife had the prius all I would have to worry about is her telling me that the light is lit.

 

cwerdna,

You really should think twice about leaving your misogyny hanging out like that. Your comment does not add anything to the discussion other than to try and insult the inteligence of the women who participate on PriusChat.com.

Plenty of women change their oil and know how. Plenty of men don't change their oil or don't know how. Wether one gender has more or less individuals with that knowledge or experience has no bearing on why Toyota would add the check engine light. Your comment would have been just as true, and less insulting without your parenthesis.

 

I once worked with the fine arts and auto editor of a midsize newspaper. He complained once that his car wasn't working well, and fellow workers asked him some questions to determine the problem. As in, "When was the last time you changed the oil?" He replied, "Why would you change the oil?" Fantastic with music, terrible with cars.