A novelty item, sub $10 vibration meter from ebay. It actually works fine. In 3 days it registered 1.8 hrs of engine time while commuting and running errands in city. I did 74 miles in 222 minutes (=3.7 hrs; yes, I logged driving time) and the meter showed 1.8 hrs. So, the engine duty is roughly 50% in my city driving. So, the actual speed when I was driving with ECU on was 41 MPH, not too shabby (I do pulse and glide all the time). When I change the oil after 10,000 miles of city driving, the engine "runs" only 5,000 miles. Not too bad for synthetic oil. Now, the experiment is finished, logging driving time is tedious. As you see from the picture, it's not really "installed" much.
is that an induction hour meter? some of them actually measure rpm as well. folk use them on lawn mowers and such
I haven't played with the Torque app a lot. Could you use it to verify if this hour meter is accurately capturing the running hours? I wonder if you wrapped an induction hour meter the way in my attachment if that would pickup the pulse? Amazon review on a vibration activated hour meter: "Nice device, however it is so sensitive that pulling a car in next to the snow thrower it is attached to results in it activating. New snow thrower, never used, now reads .3 hours with this meter attached."
I wouldn't know how to use torque to get engine hours. Sensitivity of the vibration meter depends on position. The 45 degree tilt I used gives the minimum sensitivity. I have no way to confirm the accuracy, but the result is very close to what I expected. If it was too sensitive, it would have shown the whole 3.7 hrs or even more.
Interesting since this was one of the first questions I asked here when I joined. I would be willing to bet there is an engine hours counter buried in a diagnostic level not accessible to the average Prius tech somewhere. The equipment I work on has a limited customer diagnostics, my service level diagnostics where I can make changes to NVM (non volatile memory) and a software debug down at the next level. We used to say that's where Xerox has the one guy, chained up to a terminal in the basement, that knows XMU (Xerox Mesa Unix) the NSA is looking for.
Very interesting, I'd be curious to see what you think of it as you put more time on it. Just wanted to comment on this. I remember reading something about six months ago on the C-Max forum where people recommended changing the oil based on how many miles the engine had on it instead of the odometer like the manufacturer recommended. Even though your engine may see less miles than a non-hybrid, in most cases hybrid operation will be harder on the oil. My car takes longer to get up to temperature than anything else I've ever driving because the engine spends less time running; last week it took over 12 miles to get up to temp. That means that for lots of people who commute at slower speeds the engine oil never gets up to temp in order to burn off moisture and contaminants. My wife's 2011 Sienna uses the same synthetic 0w20 my Prius calls for, and I've run an oil analysis on it. I'd be willing to bet oil from my Prius would look a little worse at 10,000 miles than oil from my Sienna at the same mileage. Of course that's just conjecture on my part, I'd be interested to see what my UoA looks like in a month or two.
Please post the UOA results, although I don't think you will notice much. Toyota engine show low wear levels on UOA in general. Now, my 5000 miles on ICE statement is a huge oversimplification. It basically means ICE runs 50% less in my driving, but when it runs, I accelerate at the top of HSI's eco zone (~2000 RPM +/- 300). Basically, the engine is not seeing the extended idling it would in a regular car with my driving style. YMMV.
Right about the time until hot oil, but if the ICE is off the oil is not being stressed. A large part of the reason for the long time until hot is the ICE efficiency. A running Prius ICE is putting out about 1/2 the heat per time compared to your older car even after the engine size is normalized. In any event, high quality Syn oil lasts 10k miles. What is not to like ?
