Rear Ended and Rodent Damage

No head, fist shakes here.

You're either an adult by now or pretty close to it, and you know enough to follow a maintenance schedule.
Your car.
Your call.

I would strongly recommend checking the dealer's work when they change the oil only because people who swing wrenches on cars sometimes make mistakes. I make mistakes on the job ALL THE TIME.
Even a brand-spanking-new car should probably be looked af for no other reason than to make sure that somebody performed a PDI (pre-delivery inspection) on the car when they yanked it off the truck.
Overfilling the engine oil is very common and most techs won't bother to remove the excess if they hold down the trigger on the bulk oil dispenser nozzle.
Will an extra four ounces hurt the motor?
Naah. Tolerances aren't quite that tight.
BUT! Being one quart low for 10,000 miles until the next change will probably damage the motor, and you will have no way of detecting it without a semi-occasional glance at the dip stick.
Only letting a dealer lift the hood on your vehicle is fairly common these days...and the car is pretty much guaranteed to hold together for 150,000 miles, which is enough for most people to get sick of the car and want a new one.
Me?
I don't like having constant $400 car payments year over year.....decade over decade.
I've found over the years that with $100 worth of tools and a little guidance (YouTube is an excellent resource!) you can stretch a 150,000 mile car into a 300,000 mile one. Lifting the hood and checking the oil about every other tank full of gas is perhaps the single best way of ensuring that your car doesn't start smoking before it's old enough to vote.

Good Luck!

 

Does such a thing exist, you've seen it? Could be.

When I went to a Toyota New Owners night, they dispensed the bulk oil into these oversized graduated plastic containers, looked like lemonade pitchers. Carefully filled, the proper amount, sitting at the ready. I've never darkened their service department's doorstep for oil changes though.

The last car we had required 3.0 or 3.2 liters motor oil, the variation dependent on whether the oil filter was change. And (you guessed it), they regularly chucked in 4.0. I finally called them on it, waking up. They said sure bring it in, we'll fix it, but by that point I'd tipped, reverting to DIY.

 

Sigh... it wasn't.

After they replaced my hoses I continued seeing leaks before it turned into a simple straight-through water-goes-in/water-goes-out-onto-the-road-while-you-watch.

I decided to just leave it until the next service and this time they've given me a bag full of hoses with holes in them and a laundry list of parts they want me to pay them to order in, mostly from Japan... they had two parts they already replaced but these don't do much without all the hoses they removed and gave to me.

This is turning into a rather costly exercise so I have to try to figure out how to ensure whatever it is or was is dead or has moved on. I park in an underground car park where the lights are always on and in theory pest control is done from time to time. I'm figuring though that whatever it was may have been living on board my car for awhile, including during the previous service and subsequent revisit to have hoses replaced last time. Some of the same hoses need replacing again now.

Because the car is still young it doesn't need annual road worthiness checks yet but when I get to that point, the washers will have to be in working order (plus although I keep my windscreen clean, it is annoying not having them available), so this needs some solution that doesn't involve me feeding some animal an endless supply of imported rubber.

 

I've seen it.

Going to a Toyota Owner's Night is rather like going to a school's Open House.
All of the desks are neatly arranged, and the school looks smells and feels like they're ready and eager to properly transmorgify your little crumb-snatcher into a productive, liberal leaning, tax paying adult.

Go back four or five weeks later unannounced....and see if everything is still quite the same.

OK....
To be honest, there might be some pretty good dealership service departments out there.
To me, they're like unicorns.
I know what they're supposed to look like, and I've spoken with people that swear that they exist. I just haven't seen one myself......and I have my doubts as to their existence.

It's VERY easy for the dealership to color outside the lines, but it's also remarkably easy to keep them honest.

Things like:
1. Checking your oil level before and after the visit. I also check to see that the filter was actually changed.
2. Photocopying and enlarging your maintenance schedule. If a dealership wants to do anything that's not on the maintenance schedule, then it's not maintenance.....it's a repair. Repairs require an explanation, a second opinion, etc...
3. If any warranty issues are reported, make sure that they're documented.

Do all dealerships use bulk oil?
No.
Quite a few open and use 'from the bottle' quarts of whatever designer blend that they insist that you have to use for your car....which isn't exactly environmentally sound, but that's another issue.
The ones that use bulk oil should at least be required to use the oil that's supposed to go into your car, which might not be the same as they put into the 4x4 trucks that they service.
If there's only one barrel?
That's a clue.

Caveat Emptor.

 

I'm in no way oppose to oil dispensed from large containers, see nothing inherently bad about them. In fact, I hope we go that way: "empty" quart (or liter) plastic bottles, each with several tablespoons of residual oil, are an environmental affront. Maybe someday, sooner than later, the DIY'rs will be able to buy bulk oil, take it away, in their own, reused containers. Kind of like bulk bins at the supermarket.

Also, oil levels are tricky. Every time I do an oil change on our Prius (8 so far), I've learned to put in the proscribed amount, do a cursory check of the dipstick, but to NOT take it too seriously: it invariably shows the oil about a pint low. This is after running the engine a minute, then letting it sit. However, check it a day or two later, after a bit of driving, level's at the top mark.

 

Gee.
That's about how I do it.

I don't have any heartburn with an oil level that's about a quarter of a quart high or low....
....when I do it. I disagree with the "experts" that suggest that overfilling (or under filling) the crankcase by that margin will destroy your motor before you can detect and correct the deficiency.
However (comma!!!) when I pay for a "professional" to do my oil change I expect not to have to crawl under my car and drain off 3/4 of a quart a day or two later....or add a half a quart....or find that the oil filter has the same paint pen markings that I put on it the last time that I did the oil change myself.

Here's the deal.
Priuses are good cars.
Even if they weren't, you can go to the dealer and have all of the maintenance items done professionally, and even if they overcharge and under-perform on a nearly criminal level then your car will last for most of 150,000 miles.
For most people?
That's as good as it needs to be.
That will give most owners a chance to start drooling over the next generation of Prius.
See also: Planned Obsolescence

It worked for GM and Apple, but I have to make my cars last a little longer than that, which is why I have to pay a little closer attention to my maintenance.

YMMV!

 

Time to get a under hood cat.

 

Sounds suspiciously like a rat to me. They are exceedingly smart little critters, and the last one I had to deal with (in the garage and the house) bested me for a couple of weeks until I put down delayed action rat bait, which fools them into thinking it's harmless, until they have had half a dozen goes at it. No more problem...

 

I also suspect a rat. I originally wondered about it being a possum but the damage is just too extensive and I don't believe a possum could get to some of those areas. I am going to have to try bait to be sure, but I fear creating more of an issue by attracting them to the bait. I live in a large multi-building development with a shared underground car park, so in my nightmares I picture them descending on my car from all over. I haven't gone to the parts department yet to get them to order all the hoses in again.

I parked next to another C at work today and confirmed something else I suspected - they didn't put my wiper arms back on correctly - they're at the wrong angle now so they don't return to the correct position and travel too far.

Sigh, turning into a very frustrating experience. My poor C.

 

Sorry for bumping an old thread but I realise I never came back to close my story off. I ended up having those hoses (quite the collection of them in the end) replaced in October 2015. My mother had moved by then (and I suspect the offending animals were likely in the dark streets around her old place) and I ended up moving at the end of that year. Either way, my washer hoses have remained intact.

I ended up fixing the wiper arms myself not long after the above post... that was quite an easy job.