First Oil Change - Pictures/Instructions

Nice sharp pictures. All areas were easy to access.
Why don't you use Mobil 1 Synthetic oil. It's majority of us to use. Last longer. 7500+ miles life.Some change for every 10,000 miles. I use 5W30 while some of us use 0W20 to get more gas mpg. Change every 8000 miles. It's on sale in Costco. I also use the Mobil supreme long life oil filter.

 

The best of M1 is it can last for 7500+ miles between change.
Of course everyone will have their own choice. Enjoy the new car.

 

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Some older cars had gasket issues. If you went from a standard oil to a synthetic and then back to a standard, the same situation that you described would occur while on the synthetic.

 

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Super anal for an oil change. The Prius C is a Yaris hybrid. Change the oil every 5,000 miles, drive the piss out of it and reap the savings! It's really cut-and-dry as well as time-honored. The car's drivetrain is basically 15 years old, rugged and bulletproof.

p.s. You should be using about 3.9 qts of oil.

The Prius C uses the ancient 1NZFXE with few modifications. They didn't so much go "back" to canister filters as "go back" to using a 15 year old engine design to save money and offer a super-cheap hybrid econobox.

 

Thanks for posting this guide. Our fist warning message "Maintenance Required Soon"
has been spooking my wife. So, I reset it last week..

Old age and illness has slowed us down a little, so it took my wife about 15 months to rack up 5,000 miles.
After looking at the maintenance schedule, We decided the first tire rotation should be followed
by some fresh Synthetic oil and filter.

For $31.01 Amazon Prime sent us: Eneos (3230310) API SN/ILSAC GF-5 Certified 0W-20 Fully Synthetic Motor Oil - 1 Gallon
I already had a spare filter left over from the trade-in (2003 Corolla). & and right filter wrench.

Used the Prius jack with a low jack-stand on the right side. Got some splash from the filter, but not super messy.
Pulled the drain bolt without too much fuss. Used disposable rubber gloves.
(Used a 3" socket extension on filter socket).

Used a DIY funnel to add one gallon of Eneos, and after driving around the block, waiting 20 minutes, the level is just under the top mark.

Now, we can drive in peace, waiting for the next message!

My wife is still loving her C2.. I can tell, because she washes it all the time..

 

^ What's your schedule say? 5000 miles or six months? I think the car's message is only based on mileage.

That said, with extremely low mileage, you can fudge it a bit.

 

Yeah, it said '5000 miles or six months'. So, we rotated the tires. Then, looked at the next one on the list (10,000 miles and another tire rotation?)
and it said 'or 1 year'.. Since it's been well over a year, and the oil looked a bit black,
we wanted to just go ahead and change the oil & filter.

It's pretty easy to do. I'll likely repeat the process every year, if we rack up over 2,000 miles per year.
Otherwise, I might go to every other year. I'll want to stick to the 5k cycle for tire rotation.

Now the old 'oil' can is full, got to get over to the recycling center soon..

 

Our mileage has been "waning" too. Used to be maybe 18000 km yearly, now barely 14000. That's one way to conserve a shrinking resource.

You might look into changing the transaxle fluid every few years. Toyota makes little or no mention of it, but it's relatively straightforward procedure, there's discussions on it.

 

That's a lot of driving. I used to drive every day, then I retired about 6 years ago.
I've never really enjoyed driving much in this area (MA), too many cars and too many bad drivers.

In 2009 when I traded in my 1999 CRV, (@30,000 miles) I almost picked up a Ford Escape Hybrid.
But, I looked at the low CRV mileage and decided a Hybrid would be wasted on me..
So, I got a regular gas hog 2.5L Ford Escape. After a short break-in, I put in Mobil 1 and a new filter 'cartridge'.

Here it is 4 years and 2 months later and I've just hit first scheduled maintenance. (Ford goes by miles).
7,500 miles, rotate tires and change oil an filter.
Amazon strikes again! $34.99 Pennzoil 550028522 5W-20 Platinum Full Synthetic Motor Oil - 5.1 Quart Jug
That's 150 miles per month. Jeepers 1800 miles per year.
I get more miles on my bicycle during the summer months.

Anyways, when we retired my wife was still driving a lot more than me.
So, last May we got her the C2. She is a long time Corolla FanGirl and likes
reliable, small, easy to park cars, so the C2 was the prefect car for her.

I'm pretty sure it's only going to stay under 3,000 miles per year.
So, I'll have to check on that transaxle fluid in a few years.

 

Up here I pick up Toyota 0W20 by the liter for bi-yearly changes (almost without fail date governs, with the 6 mo or 8000 km interval). It's quite reasonable, at under $6 Canadian per liter, likely there's a better deal on quarts in the US

It's handy having floor jack, safety stands etc: yesterday our son was over and we did his oil and transaxle, an '06 Civic Hybrid.

 

For a light weight like the C2, the Scissor jack seems a tad safer to use than a floor jack.
Not as fast, but that center lift point leaves me cold.

When I was rotating the SUV tires, I used the spare as a place holder.
I knew it was going to come to Five lifts & swaps.. After two, I got out the large floor jack!

The nice thing about DIY, you can torque the lugs and know for sure,
they aren't just semi-finger-tight and they aren't at 234 footpounds.

I've always hated using a 6 foot breaker bar to remove lug nuts..

 

good write up. i dont put that much mileage on my vehicles. so most of the time i just do yearly oil changes. i could have drove 1 mile or 5k miles and i will do a change once a year. never failed me.

 

Take it to Toyota, they also say 10k miles or 1 year... if I remember correctly. You could have them do your oil change for you.