nearly 21,000 miles on OEM filter

I'm curious why you waited "nearly 21,000 miles on OEM filter"??

 

is this the worst oil filter ever designed?my old mercedes had a canister. unscrew the wing nut, take the cover of, lift out the element, and reverse. clean and easy, no tools required.i'm thinking of going to every other or third year, i only do 2,800 miles a year in hv, and how much of that is the ice running?

 

Understandable, yes buying that tool makes it much easier.
I bought mine after the second oil change.
27 oil changes latter, I think its paid for itself for me!

 

Two wrongs don't make a right.

Letting the filter go that long was WRONG.....as evidenced by the sludge it accumulated.
Going another 15K miles before changing oil and filter again will also be WRONG no matter what materials you use.

I would suggest that your next change should be a short interval.......like 5K maybe and then you should follow the 10K recommendation.
In my book, LONG extended oil change intervals is just asking for trouble and not worth the few pennies saved.

 

Good to see you finally got that off. I use a very solid 1/2" drive breaker bar with ratchet mechanism (with 1/2" to 3/8" adapter), extension, and a Honda filter socket that's a spot-on fit at 64.0 mm face-to-face. The socket doesn't (obviously) have extensions to fit around the housing stiffener, but never any problems.

OTOH, the only time the filter housing was installed by anyone else was at the factory.

In this pic The other socket is the old size Honda used to use, but not for decades. The smaller size used to be for bikes only, that's why I got it. Now 64.0 mm is the norm for both companies.



I checked the face-to-face dimension of my (Honda) socket, it's actually around 64.5 mm. The battery on my digital caliper has died, this is just reading the decent physical increments. I'd think it would be referred to as a 64 mm socket though, since socket size usually references the piece it's for, not the socket with it's additional tolerance. Probably the same size as those sold with the 64.5 spec. Latest part number for this item is 07AAA-PLCA100. Quite solid: wall thickness slightly over 2.0 mm thick, measured at the center of a face.

 

With our last, 06 Civic Hybrid, the Maintenance Minder would get down to 15% remaining anywhere between 8500 and 9000 kms. I always changed then, but I'd guestimate 0% would happen around 10000~11000 kilometres. What does that translate to, 7000~8000 miles.

Mind you, that's with a real mix, good number of short trips. Honda's MM is not directly monitoring oil condition. I'd hazard a guess it's counting start ups, mean coolant temp, mean speed, as well as distance travelled.

 

I do not think that is a good idea. If the car is only driven 2,800 miles/year, change the oil annually to get accumulated moisture out of the engine crankcase.

 

thanks patrick, thats what i was afraid of. seems like a waste of oil, too bad there isn't a way to separate the water.

 

In your case, use of 5W-20 mineral oil (instead of full synthetic 0W-20) would be reasonable, to keep the cost of oil changes down and considering the very low miles logged between oil changes.

 

that's a good point, what about the frequent cold starts in low temps sometimes at high speed? doesn't the syn coat the walls better?

 

Probably, but at the rate you are driving the car, the lithium-ion battery will probably be dead due to age way before the engine displays any wear symptoms...

 

you're right again, as usual. i'm way overthinking this. i would be better off if the ice was a range extender. and no, i don't want a volt, too small, but the concept is interesting for my driving habits.

 

That's what honda says, in a way. They have the in dash maintenance minder, says when to do what. But in the owner's manual there's a proviso: if you're low enough mileage that the MM doesn't tell you to change, change it yearly.

 

Given the diminutive size of the Prius oil filter, I think that the wise choice would have been to have a dealer change the oil.

 

Can you estimate how much torque was required to unscrew the filter -- just length of moment arm and force applied?

 

One of the torque wrenches with needle pointer might help, to measure effort needed to break loose a fastener.