Oil leak advice

is there any oil on the ground after sitting overnight?

 

then your burning whatever is missing. just keep a close eye on the level and adding oil as needed, and ignore them.
i would start checking it weekly, as oil burning rate can increase rapidly in some cases, and if it goes below the low mark, the engine can suffer irreversible damage without warning.

if you feel like it, research some of the advice in the oil burning threads.

about how many miles in a half to a quart a month?

 

'Seeping' is not leaking.

TRUST me.
I know 'leaks' when I see them.

My advice: (Street value < $0.02)

Keep doing what you're doing.
The REASON that your car is so reliable is that you KNOW how much oil your car is using, and by this I mean USING....not leaking, weeping, seeping, wicking, or oozing.
None of these are worth yanking parts off of your car and potentially introducing the potential for new problems.

Any oil leak that requires dye to locate...ISN'T much of a leak.

Consider a 5,000 mile oil change interval (OCI)

Good Luck!

 

Ask them about "high mileage" oil before your next change.

Also ask if they will check to see if any of the bolts holding those parts on have come a bit loose.
While it doesn't do any good most of the time, making sure they are tight certainly wouldn't hurt.

 

It might be worthwhile to replace valve cover gasket, not that hard. Especially if you could DIY.

I can dig up the repair manual info on torques. It's hard to go wrong though: cross-cross tighten with a new gadket, firm but not super tight.

 

741 dollars sounds kind of high for a valve cover and oil pan gasket replacement. Like everyone else is saying if you don’t see oil on the driveway most of your loss is being burned in the engine. Quite common.

Also should you really be driving if your “no more than two” Cindy Lou Who?

 

Better to save the $741 and use it to help fund a traction battery replacement when it fails prior to the odometer reaching 300K miles.

 

Replacement valve cover gasket is $15 plus shipping here:

2000-2019 Toyota Valve Cover Gasket 11213-21011 | McGeorge Toyota Parts

Info on Valve cover torque value in attached.

Also attached, redo of Form-In-Place Oil Pan gasket. A tube of the spec'd FIP gasket material is maybe $20?

Two hours labour for both, plus and oil and filter change? For a retail mechanic, you're getting closeish to that quote, assuming all-in.

Still, bottom line: how serious are the leaks?

 

$741 to replace the 2 gaskets is very high.
I wouldn’t bother.

You drive the car a lot I would check the oil every Saturday not once a month. The running the car with low oil is why it’s eating oil to begin with.
Keep the oil at the full mark always. To mitigate the existing oil loss move up to a 40 weight oil,

Never heard of using dye to check oil leak. Dye is used for refrigerant leak as you can’t see gas. You sure can see weeping oil loss. I would check the valve cover bolts there probably loose mine were at 120000 miles.
Just tighten them up a little same for the oil pan.

Like Pat says your staring down the barrel at a new hybrid battery one way or the other so don’t put any money in this car. It’s old and has extremely high mileage.

 

It depends on what gaskets they ARE.....and how hard they are to get TO.
I think it is probably reasonable at today's prices.

Running an engine low on oil is almost NEVER the reason that it gets low in the first place.
That's fractured logic.

Sometimes the rate of loss will actually be less if left between ADD and half full.

There apparently are a lot of things you have never heard.

 

Such a nice guy.

 

You still haven’t tried the ignore user function if Prius Chat ?

Give it a shot.

It works very well.

 

So what.......you think that everyone who disagrees with anything that you say is not a nice person ??

Maybe you should be a bit more careful about what you say. Just maybe.