Low oil indicator light?

Buddy you are right, I know a lot of people like that.

But I do my own maintenance I change my oil and tranny fluid and what not. But I let this bad boy go for an extra week without checking and the craziest part was that the engine didnt sound out of the ordinary at all. I knew it was low about a quart but omg not a whole 4 quarts.


But ya I do take the full blame for this and should have been more careful.

But again that low oil pressure light would have been a good help if it came on.

 

It strikes me that, to be able to say that, your standard of "fine" has to be something like:

That would be worth checking, and not take too awfully long. With the car on, take the wire off the oil pressure switch, ground it, and see if the warning comes on. Check continuity to ground of the switch itself when the car is off. If it checks out, then you know it's working, and you were just low enough on oil for the dipstick to be dry, but not for the pump to suck air.

Or, if you find out the switch or circuit is faulty, you know what to fix.

If the switch is faulty, you can probably just figure any replacement engine you find will probably already have a working one.

-Chap

 

I'll give that a go, thanks for the info.

 

Why do you keep saying this?

But again that low oil pressure light would have been a good help if it came on

You had a low LEVEL, not a low pressure. The level of oil apparently never got below the suction of the oil pump, therefore oil pressure was maintained.

If pressure was lost for ANY significant amount of time or distance, you would have smoked the bearings in the engine, seized a rod/piston and blown a hole out the side of the block or scored the cylinders so badly you would have a smoke screen behind you now.

There's a HUGE (yuuuugggge?) difference between low level and low pressure and your car will definitely let you know about it!!!

You caught it in time, so relax. Just be more careful.

 

I know bud I deserve all the roasting lol ya absolutely I'll be for sure more careful.


Thank you guys for all your help and fast replies.


Have a great day everyone

 

That's a possible explanation of what happened. At the same time, the very low level that was reached has led the driver to wonder whether the pressure warning is reliable, and I can get behind checking that, because it is quick and easy to check. Pressure switches can go bad, and mice can munch on wires.

I agree on the advice to stop right away if the oil pressure drops, to avoid serious engine damage, but how rapid and how serious are sort of relative. The world has been full of people who treat the light as if it were the "hmm, maybe time to add a little oil" light, and their engines do not generally grenade two blocks after the light came on. (If it really did happen that way, probably fewer people would drive like that.) More commonly, the practice seems to lead to the driver getting used to higher levels of oil burning, impaired performance, and an engine that eventually fails earlier than it should have.

-Chap

 

Thanks for picking up on that, Chap. I realize that the bottom end is splash lubed, but I carelessly figured that it would lose pressure before the level got too low for the bottom end to pick it up, but that might require the connection rod caps to dip pretty deeply into the sump when it's full, which would waste power.

If he lost lube to the bottom end, it seems to me that besides excess wear on the conn rod bearings & wrist pins, there would also be extra wear on the cylinder walls and rings leading to even faster oil consumption. Sound right? If so, @Adam H. will want to keep an extra sharp eye on the dipstick now.

 

I think the conn rod bearings could be ok if the pressure stayed up; they get theirs from pressurized passages in the crankshaft (fed by ports in the main bearings). Sometimes the pressure passages within the conn rods also have small holes out the sides to spray the cylinder walls (I don't know for sure whether 1NZ conn rods do).

So, yes, I'd be worried most just about the cylinder wall lubrication. A sharp eye on the dipstick (and, at the rate it's using oil, the catalytic converter).

-Chap

 

Yeah, that poor cat is really getting a raw deal with all that oil.

 

I think I will trade this prius to carmax and get a brand new one which I will take care from 0 miles and i will know what i did and at what mileage and i won't have any of this nonsense that the previous owner did to this poor prius.

 

That should fix it all right! . I guess I could live with myself selling it to a private party if that person knew what was wrong and just wanted a project. But, in that case, you might not even get as much for it as Carmax would give. And it would take a while to find that kind of buyer.