out of oil

Ok, so i've owned my 2005 Prius since new and it has been an awesome vehicle. It is primarily my vehicle, but once or twice a year my wife takes it if she is going to take a long trip out of town (in an effort to use less gas than her car). Anyhow, I religiously change the oil every 5k miles, and the car has been very reliable, given that these oil changes are about the only thing I've needed to do to the car in 240,000 miles.

A few weeks ago my wife took the car on a trip she was taking with her girlfriends. They were going from Sacramento to Arcata, and then up the coast route to Portland and then back down I-5 to Sacramento. So I hand her the keys and kiss her goodbye and think nothing of it.

After her return, my first trip in the car is a long one as I head south to Santa Maria (300+ miles away). The first time I hit a hill on the trip, I get the BIG red triangle, along with a message on the MFD that I could not read quick enough to know what it said. Wow, what was that? I decide I'm going to stop at the next offramp and take a look. I go up another small hill just prior to the off-ramp and again I get the triangle and this time I can read the message..."low oil". Oh wow. I pull off and stop at a gas station and I had to add two quarts of oil to it. I'm late for my meeting and I've got 250+ miles to go. I keep driving south, but wonder how I lost so much oil. I'm also thinking perhaps now I've got too much oil if I was reading the stick improperly. Anyhow, the 41/46 highway between I-5 and I-101 has some steep hills, and I notice that the car has significantly lost power compared to other times crossing. After the meetings and before I head back (next day), I take the car to a quick lube place to have the oil changed. On the drive home the car still shows significantly less power then normal. Oh, and I had just had the oil changed about 1500 miles prior to my wifes trip.

When I get home I explain to my wife what happened and she said that "yep, that light was going off constantly all the way up to Portland and back". oh boy, now I'm really concerned. Other than power, I did not really notice much else different at that point, but then I started to pay very close attention after my wifes comment about her trip, knowing that she just drove 1000 miles with the low oil light flashing. Second thing that I notice after the power loss, is that I'm now getting about 35 mpg instead of the usual 43 mpg on all my freeway trips to my customers. The next thing is the most concerning, I can now hear valve clattering (or something similar). The engine sounds awful, very loud taping sounds even when lightly loaded, and noticeable inside with the windows up when the engine gets loaded up a bit.

So now, to my question; can this engine be saved? Is it possible to do a "top end" change to just the cam an valves? Is it better to change the entire engine?

I'm still driving the car for now, but I expect that it is going to break down any day. I really wanted to keep this car for many more miles...what can I do? What should I do?

Also, what is the deal with the low oil light? You would think that if it came on it would latch on so that it would stay lit to force you to pay attention and put oil in it. Or at least if it comes on two or three times in one trip it then latches on. It seems like it was only coming on when I was going up hill, and the pickup probably came away from the oil. Unfortunately my wifes trip was very hilly.

Michael

 

Well, $500 is not bad, but that seems to be for a wrecking yard pull. How do I know that the pulled engine does not have similar wear? I tried to search for rebuilt engines and so far only come up with engine builders who do everything...not sure if there is a specific Prius engine builder.

 

If it were just noise I would not be too concerned. It has dropped from 43mpg to 35mpg on my normal routes, I have a VERY noticeable lack of power. Just getting on the freeway is a struggle, and to do so I run 100 battery amps (as shown on the scangauge) for quite a while and I drain the battery completely (as shown on the MFD). So not only am I killing my engine due to friction from the damage, now I'm killing the battery at the same time. It will be interesting to see which one goes first.

Interesting side notes: cruising at 65 on the highway, the battery can recover in 5 miles or so, at 75 it seems to never catch up, but does not fall behind. Any faster, and I have to pull from the battery and it will eventually "empty out". This is on all the seriously flat highways in the California central valley, so hills are not part of the equation.

Right now, I'm just driving the car. I figure I'll just drive it 'til it drops (jditid *TM). The day it dies, hand the keys to the tow driver and then have him drop me off at the Toyota dealership.

I'll post back here after she's gone. I'm driving close to 1000 miles per week this time of year due to my frequent customer visits, so it should not be long.

 

Thanks guys. Yep, I'm checking the oil every few days at this point, and I've had two oil changes since the incident. I've switched to a high mileage oil instead of the standard oil. I'll check the plugs. I've not done that, and perhaps this will help with the fuel consumption and power. The engine tapping is so bad, I don't hold much hope that I can extend this for too long, but you never know...it might keep running for quite a while. The battery is my concern at this point as well. As noted, it has taken up a larger share of the work in getting the car moving, and I feel it is not going to be up to this task for too long given its age.

 

Update for those who are interested. I'm up to 247k and the car is actually getting better. The battery stays charged better and is not getting depleted so bad on the freeway onramps. My mileage which fell from 43 to 35 has now gone up to 38 mpg. It seems to have stabilized there, so I think there won't be any more improvements, but I'm happy to report that the car is still running. What an amazing car to take such abuse and it keeps on ticking (literally). It has noticeably more power then just after the incident, but less than prior to it. I'm happy to keep just driving it, and it will be interesting to see just how long it will last.

I've not tried any oil additives, but I did change to a Pennzoil "high mileage oil". I bought new plugs, but have not installed them yet. I started to do it one evening and then realized it is not as easy as some of my previous cars. I needed to take the fuse panel off and also needed an extension for my spark plug socket wrench.

 

Final update. The car died today. Actually the engine is still running, but due to the reduced power, it was putting extra work on the battery and the battery is what finally gave up. It started acting up and throwing codes about the high voltage battery pack. Then on the way home from a customer the current in/out of the battery went to zero and all sorts of buzzers and alarms went off. The engine went to 4000+ rpm even when there was zero throttle, and if you applied throttle it went up to the near 5000 rpm limit. I drove about 30-40 miles like this and finally the 12v battery gave up and that is what stopped the car. Without the high voltage pack charging the 12v it was just a matter of time before it died. Fortunately it died literally as I was driving past the entrance to a rest stop, so I pulled in and parked, then the next day came back and towed the car home. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this car now, but it needs a new motor and a new battery pack if it is to ever see the road again. I'm going to mull it over for a few weeks before I make any decisions.

I don't have the exact number written down, but mileage is about 259,000 miles, so I did get 19,000 miles extra out of the car after the oil episode...pretty good.