I am new on this forum. And this is my first question here. I hope I am asked at the correct place. I have a 2010 Prius with 260000 miles. The car usually consumes some oil (I need to add 1 quark after 2.5k miles). A few days ago I went on 2000 mile road trip. Before the trip oil level was low, so I added one quart of oil. At the end of the trip (when around 400 miles were left to home), the check engine light blinked for a second and went away. Still, I continued driving (yes I know I should have stopped the car and checked the codes). Near the home, something blinked on the dashboard I could not precisely read the warning because it disappeared in a very short time. But, I think It was: "low engine oil level/pressure" (something appeared before as well but I could not read and assume it was "key not detected", because my key is low on battery and sometimes is not detected properly). I immediately changed the oil (probably driving a mile or two only), and checked the saved codes, I had: "random misfire", "misfire on cylinder 2", and "misfire on cylinder 4". After the oil change (I drove only 20 miles after that) I don't see any problems, is there anything I can do now to prevent further damage to the engine? (except monitoring the engine oil level more often) BTW is somewhere Techstream available that can do a compression test or do I need to use a good old method?
I really need the car to last one more year, so I am worrying that my stupid mistake may cause serious damage to the engine.
Have you ever changed the water pump on your 260k car? If you have not, chances are that has failed or is not working as efficiently as it should. That can lead to overheating and the dreaded head gasket failure, which leads to misfiring....
I am pretty sure the misfire was caused by low oil level/pressure. My question is more like: is there anything I can do now to prevent further damage to the engine after I allowed the oil level to go extremely low?
So typically running extremely low on oil is just rough on the mechanical components and it kicks the oils butt and it starts sticking to your surfaces a lot more clogging the motor up a bit more with varnish. But running in a quart isn't bad. As long as the car has enough oil to cover the pick up and keep oil flow going you'll be just fine. We've ran a car with a quart of oil before and it didn't blow up. You just never wanna run out or get so low when you take turns the motor oil starves. I'm guessing here you need to go buy some oem spark plugs and replace your plugs. Oil burning carbons up the plugs until eventually they can hardly make contact enough to burn the mixture anymore. Also, do it quickly. Misfires eat the spark plugs and are extremely rough on these high compression prius motors.
