2nd Gen Prius Oil Consumption and Preventative maintenance Suggestion....

A cup between oil changes? You've got it beat.

 

I think your better off doing a piston soak then putting it in the crankcase. many posters here have had good luck with that. But at 175.000 miles I dont think its so much of being gummed up as it is just worn oil ring. Or maybe its massively sludged from really shitty oil.

Just use very high quality synthetic oil in your car you wont have any of these issues no oil use and spotless crankcase and lifter valley. Sludge comes from shitty oil. High quality oil does not sludge.

 

No I'm just saying at 180,000 miles which is alot of miles it probably has some piston wear. It would be a miracle if it didn't. My engine is a good bench test it has been meticulously taken care of oil wise using very high quality oil. Even then it started to eat a little oil. I moved up to a 40 weight oil and that has essentially stopped.

Most success I have seen on this site has been piston soak. But if your getting results good for you.

And all engines do not get sludge it depends on how well the car has been taken care of and the type and quality of oil it uses. My engine is pretty spotless including the piston tops as I have borescoped them. Piston tops are clean becasue its not seeing burned up oil fumes basically soot being put back in the intake path via the pcv. You can tell immediately what kind of oil your using by looking in the Throttle body. If its a gunked up mess its running dino oil.

Here's proof.
My bought new and these pictures taken at 155,000 miles and I never even wiped any off the residual oil these pictures are right after I took the valve cover off. You know how after you take the valve cover off it sometimes has all this crud burned into the top of the cover on the inside. Mine had none. I'm not bragging not busting balls I'm just saying this is a non sludge motor. If its sludgy it was treated that way
from poor maintenance and using crappy dino oil. The dealer dino oil change is the worst imho.
Everyone on here says oh wow its been dealer maintained woo hoo I have records. To me that's a death sentence for the motor.

Here's an owner maintained car:

 

Forgot the borescope.

You can clearly see clean metal on top of the piston with a circle of soot. All 4 cylinders looked like that. Very very clean except for a circle of soot. This was at 155K miles.

This is a very clean running engine.Not so much if you use shitty oil.

 

Thanks for this very interesting thread. For those of us with Gen 2 cars who are looking for a combination of effective but simple, how do we think about: Adding some ATF / Seafoam / Marvel Mystery Oil / Toyota high mileage treatment to the crankcase (via the oil filler cap)?

Have I got it straight that a few of you are strongly against the Seafoam because it's a solvent to crankcase parts, but at least one of you has empirical evidence that in cars ALREADY burning a lot of oil, it helped dramatically? My car has 170K, is using a little in the first 5,000 mi I've owned it (dipstick down 1/5 maybe) and I'm planning for: A) what to do that's easy now - ATF/Toyota fluid/Marvel oil and, if consumption increases, B) what to do later...

Would love the summary of the thread on this.

 

Thanks for the video. If you watch it, you’ll see it has little to do with Prius problems. It generally says “Toyotas need synthetic oil changes every 5,000 miles or at least every 6 months due to the modern style rings on the pistons”.

 

lol

 

if you drive the vehicle as designed ie; normally to hard on occasion and use full synthetic oil, you should have no problems. If you drive delicately and "hypermile" you will glaze the bore and use oil. Give it a good floggin' now and then to de-glaze it or "blow the cobwebs out" as it is known.

 

Urban myth?