Prius burning oil

1. This isn’t Toyota’s problem, and despite my lifelong dream of being featured on Grit’s Signature Hit parade I’ll let somebody else explain to you why an 11 year old car that burns a quart of oil every 10 days hasn’t been “perfectly maintained.”

2. Others have faced this problem.

3. ANY solution that doesn’t involve a dealer will be cheaper. MY recommendation would be to find an independent mechanic that will be able to verify that you’re burning enough oil to warrant an engine replacement - which should be closer to a $2,000 fix more or less.

4. If you ARE burning 3 quarts of oil a month then you’d better get the mechanic to replace your catalytic converter too. On free soil this would normally be a $200 repair but One of the many MANY....ah...”interesting” things about living in the California is that catalytic converters are somewhat more expensive to repair.


Good Luck!

 

How many miles are on your car?
How many miles do you drive in ten days?

 

How many kilometres has it done? And how many do you do in 10 days?

 

Have a used engine installed.

The definition of “perfect“ seems to have flexibility to it.

 

After reading the posts in this thread, down at the bottom the system shows a list of "similar" threads.
You should read through them before deciding what to do next.
Gummed up rings seems to be a common problem ........with some fairly simple "chemical" fixes.
While I don't generally like chemical fixes for most anything, in this case it can't really hurt anything since the engine is pretty useless in it's present condition.

For instance.......somewhere near that range of the price you were quoted, you could get a NEW engine installed.....or almost new.
You also could get a used car in good condition.

 

welcome!
how many miles on her?

where are you in the great state?

how many miles do you traverse in 10 days?

try to find a non dealer mech who will install a low mile salvage engine.
some have had luck for a couple grand all in.

 

So your engine uses one quart per 300 miles of driving? (30 miles/day * 10 days)

That is quite bad.

The low engine oil pressure warning means that the oil level dropped so low that oil pressure was not maintained. That will cause accelerated engine wear and allowed the engine to get to the point where it is burning oil at such a fast pace. At this point if you want to keep the car, the least cost solution would be for an independent to install a used engine. That might cost you $3K depending upon local labor rates.

 

Have a good mechanic check it over.

Leaks? PCV? Compression test? It could be something simple - or terminal. Check the Oil Pressure sender (I've no idea where it is, but I had one which cracked on a car decades ago and leaked quite considerably).

If it's happened suddenly - has the oil grade (or even brand) changed?

Being almost 12 years old and 120,000 miles (almost 200,000 km) - TOYOTA won't come to your rescue.

But - as engines age, they will use more oil, though a quart every 300 miles sounds excessive.

 

Not sure - if there is an internal fault in the engine, the oil pressure gauge can read low even when there is plenty of oil. It doesn't read the oil level, just whether oil pressure is maintained.

BUT YES - if the oil LEVEL is low, the oil pressure will be too.

 

You could have a mechanic check it out just to be safe. Although I've seen around here some members ended up driving on low or nearly no oil and their engines ended up just being fine after catching it soon enough, so don't worry too much yet. Top off the oil and see what a mechanic says.

 

First make sure the oil isn't leaking out. If it isn't, you should try doing several cheap oil changes over the next thousand miles or so using Seafoam. Change the PCV valve as well (easy)

Put a half can of seafoam into the crankcase with the oil and drive it for 50-100 miles. then change the oil. then do it again in a few hundred miles. do this 2-3 times. it should help clean up the piston rings.

or use the Toyota engine additives instead of seafoam, 2-3 times. someone has a link on this site or just use google. it's made for cases like this.

Many will say not to do this, but in my opinion there is only benefit for your engine at this point. my 2nd gen has 208k miles. according to dealer records they have done the Toyota brand engine flush at the dealer at least 2-3 times for the previous owner. My Prius burns almost ZERO oil at 208k miles, and the (synthetic) oil looks very clean after 4000 miles.

Going forward, use synthetic oil and make sure to change every 4-5000 miles max. There is certainly a good amount of blowby at this point, which is diluting the oil and making it a poor lubricant. With your kind of problem I wouldn't go longer than 3000 miles on an oil change until it's resolved or the car dies.

 

I'd recommend using BG EPR rather than multiple seafoam-oil changes to flush the engine. Pour one can into the crank case, put the car into maintenance mode and run the engine idle for 20mins, then change the oil. That'll clean things up real nice. Add BG MOA into the clean oil afterwards for better lubrication and your engine should be good. I've done this recently and so far my consumpton has been drastically reduced. Though it all depends on why your engine was consuming so much in the first place. If it was clogged up piston rings, the BG products should help. Your mechanic should clarify the issue for you first.

 

this is also good advice. It's likely you will need a new engine because the rings have deteriorated to the point that so much oil is being flushed into the combustion chamber. but if that's the case there is no reason not to go all out and try to save it with some detergents.

you can get really crazy and seafoam through the vacuum line, idle it in maintenance mode with the engine going until all the white smoke is cleared from the tailpipe. there will be a LOT if its as bad as it sounds. it will blow by the rings where the gunk is. Then you MUST do an oil change.

Your engine may and should stall if you feed the engine cleaning solution through the vacuum line fast enough. when I've done this on normal combustion engines it's actually normal and you're supposed to do it until the engine stalls, but I have never done it on a Prius. Hopefully someone else can chime in.

 

As I suggested in Post #12 above - get it assessed by a good mechanic, particularly a compression test, and for leaks.

 

Oh come on Alan.......doing it right is no fun.
Taking wild guesses and dumping snake oil into every opening in the engine is much more adventuresome.

 

Okay man who pulled out the plug there for a moment.