Metal Flakes after Oil Change

5,000 mile change is always a good idea. are you burning any oil? blackstone labs can analyze the metal flakes.

separately: are you aware of the egr issue?

 

Clean them off, and if they are aluminum color, I'd say there are parts of a bearing, or piston.
You could be looking at a new, or used engine. Metal in the oil is never good.

 

How's it sounding?

 

What do you know about this car's past?

If this is your first oil change (that you did yourself,) then you're starting out with a blank slate.
You can do some archeological record digging on the vehicle's maintenance records with your VIN.
I also heard some talk in the past about looking up your engine S/N to see if it;s the one that was in the car when it left the factory.

Personally?
I do not really think all that matters very much.
If your car is running well, not using or leaking oil, and getting good fuel efficiency I wouldn't lay awake at night worrying about it.
If it's a middle-aged pound puppy, then you get what you get.
A 12 year old Prius with 130,000 miles on the clock is not exactly a spring chicken, but there's no reason to expect that this car will not hold together for another 8 years and/or 100,000 miles.

All you can do for NOW is to reduce your OCI to 5,000 miles, and monitor your oil burn rate and look for metal during the next oil change.
Since it's still legal to do your own oil changes in the California, and you have access to relatively inexpensive 0w20 (>$3.5/qt) I would consider another change before 5,000 miles.

 

I would be curious to see the the Blackstone analysis of your oil http://www.blackstone-labs.com

Probably too late for this oil change but definitely the next one at 5K miles?

 

If there is metal chips in the oil it’s usually time to start planning farewells to engine. I would not plan long road trips.

 

Those aren't metal flakes. Those look more like chunks. If I had something like that come out of my engine, the first thing I would wonder about is why it was still functioning. I would also clean the heck out of that pan, put the cheapest oil possible in the engine, run it for a few miles/minutes and drain it again to see if there was actually something still in the pan or if perhaps that contamination was from somewhere else. If that stuff actually came out of your engine, there's more in there and it will show up.

If you're lucky, maybe its just something in the valvetrain failing. Any unusual noise?

 

Did you cut open the filter to see if any of that stuff was in the filter? If the filter's clean, then that stuff wasn't in the engine.

 

I already wondered how come you had not noticed anything before oil change. Metal chips of that size coming out would be The end of story.

 

To me, it looks like sand or grit. Could be the prior filter was faulty, or, they replaced it with a sub-par filter.