Oil change every 5K required for limited warranty

congrats and welcome! read through the warranty, to see if it's worth it. you still have several factory warranties in place, especially the 8/100 hybrid system. and ask the if 5,000 miles is a mistake. the wording might just be repeated from gen 2. all the best!

 

what? is that a link? i think you need 5 posts. talk to me.

 

me neither, sorry.

 

on the main forums page, theres a 'priuschat website questions' forum. one of the stickies is about pics. you can also start a thread with your question if that doesn't help.

 

The key is the "Upload a File" button next to the "Post Reply" button.

 

Did they give you a third party warranty or is this the Toyota CPO (certified Pre-owned) warranty?

 

As far as I know, if you do oil changes at 5,000 miles, you can get away with "dino" oil. Full synthetic is only required if you want to go the full 10,000 miles. This would save some money on the service. If your warranty requires 5,000 mi. oil changes and full synthetic oil, then they are just out to rip you off.

 

it's one of those dealership "warranties." shady if you ask me. they require services at their facilities (watch out for the oveinflated 15,000 mile and 30,000 mile services) and they will force you to pay exorbitant diagnostic fees when something happens and likely deny any warranty (see "obligations").

 

I do not know if our nearby dealership is some sort of golden goose, but their Toyota 0W20 (full synthetic) is hands down the cheapest oil going: $5.91 for bottled liters, or $4.50 in bulk.

 

I do my own maintenance. I keep receipts for the consumables (oil, etc.) and note the mileage in the warranty booklet when I perform something. I also take it to a dealer periodically to get checked out; they do all the basic checks for free with the hope that they'll find something broken that I'll pay them for.

That warranty very carefully picks out things that rarely fail (or, like the supercharger and turbocharger, just don't even exist on your car), if you ask me. A lot of them will be covered by other warranties, too. I believe Oregon is a CARB state, so you get the CARB warranty. At least as of 2010, the powertrain warranty was 5 years/60k miles, the hybrid system warranty was 8 years/100k miles, and the CARB warranty was 15 years (10 years for the battery)/150k miles. If it were me, I'd risk it and not bother with doubling the oil change interval for their stupid warranty - and if it comes in handy, maybe I'd get lucky and they wouldn't ask for all my maintenance records. But do what makes you most comfortable, I guess.

As far as the CARB warranty, it's not totally clear to me exactly what all is covered, but it seems like basically anything that makes you fail a smog check. Since a check engine light is an automatic failure, I'd imagine that this covers quite a large number of things. Probably not the turbocharger, though.