Paid for an oil change, but didn't get one!

Amen to that! I took a previous car to Jiffy Lube once and while they did actually change the oil, they also left oil on the steering wheel, armrest and floor mat. When I went back in to speak to the manager he said he'd pay for a bottle of cleaning solution, but that I'd have to clean it myself. I said no thanks and have never taken any of my cars into anyone since.

I actually prefer to do my own oil changes, that way I know exactly what's going in the engine and what filter is being used.

Now that we've purchased a new Prius and have free service for two years, I'm somewhat motivated to let the dealership perform the freebies, but I'm still a bit apprehensive.

 

Hey,


I just got a new Prius v in early February. Like you, I'm very apprehensive about letting the dealer do it.

I'm also not sure that I'd wait for 10K with the original factory oil in it. I'll probably do my own change at 2K and mark the position of the filter housing and the casting with a dab of white paint both before and after the oil change, so that I don't have to torque it with a torque wrench and to verify that the filter was changed at the dealer at 10K.

 

- The overfill is bad.

- The oil leak is bad. Definitely make sure that the sump plug is properly installed and not cross-threaded, however it's most likely just a slow dripping from oil spilt around the oil filter mount during the change (so technically not actually a leak).

- I think that they did in fact change your oil, and I have several reasons to believe this.

1. The overfill.

2. The oil leak (probably not really a leak but some spilt oil).

3. The oil stains on the seat etc. Yep bad I know, but it does point to them actually working on the car.

4. The oil looks pretty clean in thin film on the dipstick.

5. While a thin film of oil will still look clear and clean even when it has a small amount of contaminants, a large amount of oil (like when you pour it into a container) can look darkish even if it's only a tiny bit dirty. As you know, during an oil change it's impossible to remove all of the old oil, so the fresh oil can easily be mixed with 1/2 qt of old oil during the change. Some DIY guys do "extreme" measures like an overnight drain, or with the car jacked on an angle etc to minimize this, but you can be sure that the shop guys wont do anything other than quick (few minutes) drain.

Honestly your drained oil doesn't look all that bad to me. It looks fully consistent with 3.5 qts of new oil + 0.5 qts of the old. Also remember that if the car had been sitting for a while before you drained the worst oil often settles to the bottom.

 

synthetic gives you 2 advantages: easier starting in the cold and longer service life. Now many many many people have and will continue to argue with me on priuschat about this issue because I don't have 'hard scientific evidence to back up my claim', but I believe that if you want to significantly extend your service interval with synthetic oil, you should also buy a high capacity oil filter, such as Fram XG4967 ($7), mobil m1-103 ($13) and whatever the Bosche one is ($14).

Now your standard oil filter that you can pick up from toyota dealership or any auto store MAY OR MAY NOT be able to filter for 13-15,000 miles w/o getting clogged up, but the 3 aforementioned ones WILL be able to for certain. In the case of the fram its actually cheaper or the same as the dealership and is readily available which is much more convenient than having to drive to the dealership.

I'm a DIY guy myself, and I do agree those stealership prices are high, but hey, unlike the fast lube places they put plastic on the seats and paper on the floor, that costs money you know

 

The color of the virgin oil will vary by a large amount from one brand/type/weight to another. A light weight synthetic like your Mobil-One can be almost as clear as water while various brands of conventional oil can be a relatively golden to brown color right from new. So you cant really judge it on color alone, you may need to look more at its translucency/opaqueness.

Looking at the photo of your oil in the measuring cup, I can still see through to the red graduations near the very bottom of the cup. So there's still quite a lot of translucency there. Maybe they didn't change it, but I think they most likely did (albeit a fairly crappy job).

That's kinda the worst case scenario with an overfill, blow-by pressurizing the crankcase and blowing a seal. This happens if the oil level get so high that it completely blocks all the ventilation passages in the block (that normally vent to the PCV system). This wont blow your sump plug (it's too strong) or your oil filter (different part of the oil system and already under much higher pressure than you'll ever get in your sump). It will blow the engine main seals (on the end of the crankshaft). I doubt that this is what's happened (certainly hope not as it's an expensive repair if it has.)

Sounds like a good plan. I do likewise as it's often the only way you know the job's been done properly.

 

maybe he should have ran with it and let the engine blow up on him. jiffy lube screwed up an oil change for my mother and the engine blew up on her rx, lexus dealership called jiffy lube HQ and threatened to sue on our behalf, a few days later our lexus had a brand new engine along with some other new parts courtesy of jiffy lube, she only had 70K on it at the time, just imagine how awesome it would have been if the engine had 200K on it and was on its last legs.

 

if I did my own oil changes, what would I need to proof I performed them if I needed any warranty work performed? is there anyway to have the data entered into Toyota's system which tracks the records on my vehicle

 

I measured that over fill shown in your first photo (based on the known distance of about 45mm between the low and high dimples) and it's a good 1/2", probably even a shade over 1/2". That's pretty bad.

My dealer used to consistently overfill my oil by about 1/4" and though it never caused any problems, I do think the efficiency is slightly better now that I do my own oil changes and it's never overfilled.

I think the problem is that the workshop manual states the refill volume as 3.9 qts whereas most of us find that about 3.6 to 3.7 qts will get us right to the top dimple (even with a pretty thorough drain). So most shops will just pump 3.9 qts and usually be about 1/3 of a quart or so over (depending upon how well it was drained).

 

hold the phone stop the presses
are you implying that you will change the oil every 10K miles and the filter every 5K miles??? now I've never removed an oil filter w/o removing the drain plug 1 or 2 minutes earlier, but I'm pretty sure most of the "good" oil will come out of the oil filter hole. You may be able to do this on a car with the filter on top of the engine that has been off for awhile but not on a prius.

you can change the oil without changing the filter (such as using the high capacity filter I talked about earlier with cheap oil) but you can't do the reverse.

if you've already bought a case of 10 toyota filters here's what you should do so you don't waste them:
in Oct perform an oil & filter change with Semi-Synthetic oil.
in May perform an oil & filter change with conventional oil.

by doing this you will save a lot of money over using full synthetic, and semi-synthetic will still make for easier starting in the winter, and should last you 7 months. Conventional oil is fine for the summer and should last you 5 months, hence the Oct/May interval I recommend.

You are only as strong as your weakest link, so using nice oil with cheap filter or cheap oil with nice filter does not make much sense. I personally use Pennzoil Platinum full synthetic (their conv oil is absolute garbage but their syn is wonderful) with the fram XG4967 high capacity filter, it lasts me 13K miles, it costs me roughly $29, my father spends $40 on the materials to use the Mobil 1 extended performance with Mobil M1-103, it costs him $40 and lasts him 15K miles, I don't think spending 38% more money for 15% longer run time is worth it, but some people just need to buy the most famous name brands (he rides Michelins, I'm happy with bridgestones, I admit michelins are 5% better but at 20% more expensive is it worth it?? I think not)

 

I would question the use of the Fram filter based on the information I found here.

 

It is normal to see some liquid pooling at the bottom of the throttle body. Don't worry about it if you do not have any driveability symptoms.

This may be a combination of hydrocarbons coming from the PCV hoses, as well as fuel coming up from the intake valves into the intake manifold as the Atkinson cycle allows some air/fuel mixture to leak out of the intake valves as the compression stroke commences.