Dealership added the wrong oil

Thank YOU.... I contacted the dealer to ask them what on earth they did with the manuals. The salesperson admitted they were there during the deal, then gone at delivery. No one seems to know where they disappeared to, but they promised they would replace them. I surely hope so- Love the car... first tank it got 45.1 MPG. I had gone out of area to get this CPO... and my local dealer is NOT happy with me. He told me it was unprofessional to go somewhere else and not buy local. HMMM? Unprofessional to not give him $2000 more for a lesser car? OKAY. I also asked for the instructions for installation for the cargo net and he told me get it from the person who sold me the car. SPOILED BABY... I guess I will need to go to a different Toyota dealer for my Maintenance also... OKAY!

 

I would be talking to Toyota Corporate about this dealer. The dealer has a responsibility to look after all Toyota car owners by virtue of the fact that he is a Toyota franchise. The dealer represents Toyota in your area and there behavior reflects poorly on Toyota.

John (Britprius)

 

Here's the instructions: Installing Cargo Net | PriusChat

At least you don't have to drill holes in your car.

Suzy, it's going to take less time for you to DIY than it is going to complain to Toyota that the dealer isn't running a lending library.

There's a lot of info out there on the web just waiting for a search.

 

and it's even better at this in ECO mode.

 

Using 5W20 will actually reduce your oil consumption compared to 0W20, due to higher viscosity. Toyota recommends the zero-grade because it marginally improves mileage, not because it provides any greater engine protection, which should be marginally less if anything. In your climate, you'll never need a winter oil (which is what the W stands for).

If you are worried about engine damage or voiding warranty, that would be impossible to prove. Any 2-bit lawyer would love to take Toyota to court over something like that.

 

Sad to say, but it may not exist. Here's a link to Toyota's Materials Distribution:

Toyota Parts and Service

In the lower right of the text there is a number you can call to ask.

Prii are very complex vehicles. While my 2004 Sienna has 2 main volumes, a 2010 Prius has 4, and a 2011 has 5! I'm not sure if that even includes the Electrical Wiring Diagrams. Just search using the pull down's on what is available, or better call the number. They would be more than happy to sell the paper version if they do already have it.

If it isn't available in book form,

https://techinfo.toyota.com

is the site which should have the manual in digital form. Tell the dealer that you know it's available in digital format if it isn't in book form, and ask if they'll pay for a subscription for you:

TIS

Then you might be interested in getting a .pdf printer such as PDF24 Creator, as your printer might have a "heart attack" trying to print all those pages.

 

Since the engine starts and stops frequently, I'm not sure if this is completely true for a Prius, or any vehicle with start stop technology. Ask most people that work on cars, and they will agree that most engine harm/damage occurs during start up, when all the oil has drained back into the pan, and very little is left clinging to the cylinder walls for example and there is no pressure. 0W-20 will flow quicker than 5W-20. A while back Mercedes switched recommended oil for practically all their vehicles, past ones included, to 0W-40.....

 

All true, as far as it goes. But the Prius engine is not firing while it spins up, which makes a big difference. Spark and fuel are switched on after it reaches 1000 rpm. There's virtually no engine wear.

 

If I recall correctly, there were multi-grade oils before there were synthetics, but they only went as low as 5W, and weren't recommended for all engines. I believe this was because the lubricating qualities of a multi-grade non-synthetic oil were insufficient to provide adequate lubrication. This seems to be borne out by the fact that before synthetics, multi-grade oils weren't available for hard-use applications, such as some air-cooled aircraft engines, until synthetics came along. The first 0W I saw, was a blended synthetic.

Toyota recommends a full synthetic oil because of the superior lubricating qualities, and they recommend the 0-grade because of the lower friction of a lower-viscosity oil, which helps with mileage. It doesn't hurt either to have a 0-grade oil when it's well below zero.

 

While their Toyota mechanics go online, 5 hard cover books were available (@ $1250) for the 2010 and I believe are for you model. They agreed to the deal so they must provide the manuals, or somehow give you free access to TIS for the life of your ownership. Good luck with the latter though.

 

Sounds outrageous, but printing hardcover books for limited circulation is incredibly expensive. PDF seems like the best solution all-around.

 

They made the deal. Last I heard Toyota is not allowing disks and thumb drives to be handed out, so their hard cover and TIS are the only "legal" options to the Dealership.

 

That will bite them in the nice person.
As it should.

 

In the real world they are going to try and " work a deal" to get out of this one...don't let them. Those books will cost them more than that price in dealer paid services lost to an owner with skills. In other words, those books a Gold.

 

So spinning an engine with less oil coating the bearings, cylinders at 1000 RPM wouldn't occasion any wear? Seems to me the crank and valve train are still working and the piston rings are still scraping the cylinder walls.

 

Last time I bought a physical Service Manual was for an '06 Civic Hybrid. It's a single tome, a good 2.5" thick. Cost about $85. It's relatively well written, lots of clear illustrations, often a preamble that gives an overview. It's one downside is a burgeoning, ever growing morass of acronyms, sadly typical in the industry.

Still, worth the money. The Toyota Repair Manual encyclopedia? A bloated mess.

 

No explosions in the cylinders means virtually no wear. Its the load that causes wear. When the Prius ICE fires there's already full oil pressure and lubrication. If that was not the case, Prius engines would be dropping all over the place.

 

I'm REALLY surprised to hear that 5W20 vs 0W20 oil made such a huge difference in gas mileage, and that it generally seems to be considered a big deal. My understanding was that the last number (20, in this case) referred to the viscosity at operating temperature, and the first number (0W or 5W) referred to the viscosity only when cold (~at or below freezing). If that's the case, it shouldn't make any difference whether you used 0W or 5W in a warm climate / warm season, assuming both options are full synthetic and otherwise equivalent quality etc.
Have I been mis-informed? Apart from winter in cold climates, why does it matter whether you use 5W or 0W, as long as you're using a good-quality 20-weight synthetic oil?
Hoping to be enlightened here.

 

In a world without friction, we could travel from A to B without using any energy; the energy we used to accelerate, would all be recovered when we decellerated. But we don't live in that world, which means we burn fuel to overcome friction; which is either the atmosphere, the tires on the road, the heat generated by current flowing through wires, and by agitating oil, when we overcome it's viscosity, or "friction." The energy is converted to heat. If you've ever heard a large machine starting up in cold weather, that moaning sound is the oil getting warmed up really fast.

Unfortunately our favorite way to overcome that friction in most vehicles is to burn petroleum, and the engines we use aren't fantastically efficient at doing so. Most of the energy generated eventually produces heat, but along the way, some of it is used to propel the car. Hybrids are a serious effort to harness some of that lost energy. Little things count for a lot in this application.

So not surprisingly, oil viscosity is an important factor for fuel economy in the Prius.

 

Mythbusters did a test regarding viscosity and swimming if I remember. They thickened up the water in a swimming pool to determine whether it would make is easier or harder to swim in it. I think it made it much harder if I recall correctly.

I had a 1977 GMC pickup with full-time 4WD. It never got good mileage, but I poignantly remember using it to commute about 12 miles each way in the winter, and I calculated my mileage to be around 5 MPG when you included the engine warm-up and fighting against all the stiff grease in both drive axles as you drove in snow and -30+ winter weather.