oversized oil filter ?

Take a look at John Kelley's video where he explains the Prius Prime trans-axle which links the two motor-generators and the internal combustion engine. Particularly, see his discussion about 37 minutes into the video where he discussed the electric oil pump which circulates oil through the trans-axle for both lubrication and cooling.

While the internal combustion engine may run very rarely on the Prime, the oil is still being circulated and subject to heat and contamination from the metal particles which are the result of normal wear of gears, bearing and other moving parts.

As for running the Prime in HV mode weekly, the Prime is designed to run its internal combustion engine periodically, but at much less frequent intervals.

I am not sure that there is any real benefit to your strategy -- but that is purely my opinion.

Moreover, I hope that you don't "dump good oil" or any oil; it should be disposed of and appropriately recycled. According to Mobil, used motor oil "can be cleaned and fully reused as a fuel oil. One gallon of used oil provides one gallon of fuel oil. With higher-intensity processing, it can be re-refined back into lubricants at about a 60 percent yield – 1 gallon of used motor oil provides about 2.5 quarts of lubricating base oil."

 

When I use to hang out at my cousin’s service station “dump” was synonymous with “drain”. Weekly a truck come by to pick up all the drained oil. I asked what he did with it and he said he took it back to the storage depot and it was just added to the gas in those huge storage containers at X parts per million. Not sure if they still do it.

 

Having already done one oil change so far (0-30W Mobil 1 synthetic), I can tell you that there is probably only about 0.3" clearance between the edge of the very small oil filter and a metal flange. If you put anything with a larger diameter on, it will either just barely fit (which leaves no room to use an oil filter removal tool) or it will hit the flange.

 

@lextoy - Sorry, not sure what you mean. The oil filter was mounted parallel to the ground (it unscrewed towards the left front wheel if that makes sense). There was a right angle flange where the filter was mounted and the limited clearance appeared to be due to the oil pan sub assembly.

I think there was a decent amount of clearance from the plastic panel that you needed to unscrew to the oil filter. The biggest issue is that the space available will be even more limited by the small clearance between the flange and the side of the oil filter. It could be up to 0.5", though. Too small for me to get my hand around to unscrew by hand, thus requiring the Motivx oil filter cap plus a breaker bar because it appeared to have been put on by a professional weightlifter.

 

I changed the oil early at about 2.5k miles (just an old school habit of mine, I guess). Have not noticed any mileage drop-off due to 0-30W.

Still averaging about 100 mpg combined HV and EV. I charge about 3-4 times per week.

 

Moreover, I hope that you don't "dump good oil" or any oil; it should be disposed of and appropriately recycled. According to Mobil, used motor oil "can be cleaned and fully reused as a and other moving parts.

Proper disposal of used motor oil/ Automatic Transmission fluid / power steering fluid / brake fluid : you can collect used motor oil , ATF, power steering fluid in the same container. Take old oil to any auto parts store ( not on Mondays, my goto usually has their drum full ). Brake fluid needs to collected in it's own container for hazardous waste collection. If not, many recyclers tend to discard mixed/contaminated oils.

 

I'm confused. I didn't know the engine oil circulated thru the cvt

 

It isn't engine oil.
The non prime models have an engine driven oil pump in the transmission which does not run when in EV mode (short distances anyway, so that fine and you still have the effect of gears slinging oil around).
The prime models use an electric oil pump because the EV range is a lot bigger so you need better cooling and lubrication to keep the transaxle from overheating.

 

Personally, i use a Toyota 90915-YZZF1 filter that is about an inch longer then the 90915-YZZN1 the Prius uses. Same bypass valve setting, same size, just longer. Works wonder.