08 Prius wear and tear questions

All these engines seem to use oil as the miles increase, at 173k miles, I would think it's normal to have oil consumption.

The old plugs look great, don't think you have anything to worry about. Just monitor the oil consumption and add oil as needed

Who sells certified cars with over 100k miles? That's a lot to be certified

 

Plugs look like they are burning well (no glazing, slight brown, even across all plugs).

Tranny fluid looks bad, you might want to change it again next year too until it starts staying transparent longer.

 

That's not so much the fluid as the accumulation on the magnetic drain bolt. That said: good policy to change the fluid, if it's never been changed that's a loooong stretch.

 

He said it was "ATF was BLACK with practically no red tinge." so to me that's likely the original fluid and probably looked like motor oil from a diesel when it came out........certainly worth shortening the interval until it's running cleaner IMHO.

 

Ahh ok, was fixating on that drain bolt pic.

Yeah I first replaced ours at the one year mark: simple and cheap chore, why not.

 

Add 2 filter magnets to your oil filter. That's a bit black. Lots of carbon. Then get a quick release fumuto drain plug with the long nose on it


the bat cave

 

I've had magnetic drain bolts on a variety of Hondas with automatic transmissions: they invariably have a silvery growth of metallic paste on them.

I'm not sure about second gen oil filter wrench, would the size be the same as third gen? Maybe someone will comment. I'm using a Honda wrench, same size: 64mm face to face inside (carefully measured with caliper, it's roughly 64.5 mm) and there's 14 faces. There's plenty available. For me: the Honda wrench is a known quantity, readily available, HEAVY stamped steel. The part number now is

07AAA-PLCA100

That number has changed over the years, but is the same item I believe.

 

I've found that some of these cars use oil earlier than others. My 05 has an engine from an 09 that only had 86k on it. It's got about 110k now and it's starting to use a little. I use a quart of Lucas oil stabilizer about every third oil change and it seems to slow down.

 

Yes, 3 qts oil and 1 qt Lucas.

 

The same size oil filter socket works on all Toyotas. I have a TOY 640 and have used it on Gen 2 and 3 Prius and RAV4. Only caveat is it gets stuck easily.

 

Seems like a common size then, industry wide. I'm usually using an extension with mine, and if it sticks when I'm trying to remove it, I find tapping the extension will jar it off. Here's a pic of two Honda sockets I have. The one on the left is the 64 mm, the current one I use. The one on the right is a relic; Honda no longer uses that side. It's funny, the smaller one I got for a Honda motorcycle, and they adopted that filter size for their cars eventually.

Anyway, rambling: what I wanted to illustrate, the older socket on the right has a piece cut out, handy for prying the socket off with a screw driver, if/when it sticks.

 

I use a pair of 20 in channel locks for oil filter changes, I haven't seen an oil filter I couldn't remove with those (including big diesel filters).

 

Think I know what you're describing, wide-jaw locking pliers? There was a brand-name: ViceGrips. I need a pair of those for removing the lids of spaghetti jars.

 

Technically they are called tongue and groove pliers but the trade name is channellock just like folks ask for a Kleenex or Band-aid.

Attached a photo of what I use below.