2008 Prius Burning Oil Fast

Um, yes, I know exactly what I'm talking about and I've done dozens of rebuilds in the last 25 years to boot.

Do I need to draw a picture. Carbon builds up between the top and bottom surfaces of the ring and between the horizontal surface of the ring land. There are 3 surfaces of the ring land. Top, side, and bottom. The top and bottom surfaces are shared surfaces with the groove. Look at the picture above.

 

Yes, but specifically deposits BETWEEN the top ring surface and the bottom ring land surface and bottom ring surface and top ring land surface.

I think this is a case of you say you say potato and i say potato.

 

The point was the excessive oil consumption that the OPs Prius is having.

Carbon build up on the lands does not cause oil consumption. It's leakage past the rings into the combustion chamber
that causes it. The lands don't do a thing.

It is the carbon that builds up in the ring grooves and on the rings that causes the rings to get stuck within the grooves
which then causes oil consumption (one cause anyway - there are many ways an engine can consume more oil than it does
when brand new).

 

Dude, the ring land doesn't have horizontal surfaces - it's just the vertical surface at the outside diameter of the piston.

The piston ring grooves and the rings have horizontal surfaces known as flanks. The piston ring groove flanks are the upper and lower surfaces of the ring grooves. The upper and lower horizontal surfaces of the rings are also known as flanks.

You may have rebuilt many engines but you haven't been using the correct terminology.

But if it gets the job done........

 

https://www.hastingsmfg.com/ServiceTips/piston.htm

"That part of the piston above the top ring or between ring grooves. The lands confine and support the piston rings in their grooves."

 

Anyways, back to the OPs issue. Do a compression check before you ditch your engine. If the compression is good, then you might just have really badly seized oil rings.

Also, if you get something like this:

Provision 100 Fiber Optic Inspection Bore Scope Camera Used with Book Magnet Ect | eBay

It's an inexpensive fiberoptic borescope. I've had this one for 15 years myself and find it useful for all kinds of things around the house too.

It comes with a right angle mirror attachment and fits perfectly the spark plug holes. You can easily see cylinder wall scoring with it. You'll need to rotate the crank to move each cylinder far enough from TDC to see the cylinder walls.

A compression check is also easy to perform if you have one of these:

and a compression gauge(basic tools also assumed).

 

"This land is your land, this land is my land. From California to the New York island"

Whatever works for you, Sorka. I've had enough for one day.

 

My 08 has 164,000 mi on it and she's been buring a qt every 800 mi for about 50,000 now. I've taken great care of her. I had to replace the pcv valve, chain, chain tensioner and others. Should've had them do the pistons and rings while they were there, but it wasn't in the budget.

There is a class action lawsuit against Toyota for other of their models. I'm waiting to hear back on if the Prius is included... if it isn't, are there enough of us here that we can make that happen.

This is absolutely on Toyota and they should pay to have our rings replaced.

Once I get a call back from the class action lawyer, I'll start a thread here and work to get names.

I love my prius and would love to keep her, but running completey out of oil (3.5 qts) every 2,000 mi is ridiculous.

Does synthetic oil clog up the rings more than regular oil?

 

haven't heard of many problems, at what mileage would it be acceptable? or to turn it on it's side, what percent of 2008's would have to burn that much oil to make a class action suit viable?

 

Byron, that's bad luck to have the engine use that much oil so early in its lifespan. I would run 3 tanks of fuel injector cleaner and a thicker oil (10W-40 or 15W-50) and see if the oil consumption improves (definitely check the oil on every fillup). At least one user reported the car using less oil after running a few tanks of Techron.

 

The owner's manual states that 1 qt every 600 miles is the limit at which Toyota would have done something about the oil consumption. You're way out of warranty now so you don't have a leg to stand on - so to speak.

 

My understanding of the Toyota lawsuit was carbon was plugging the oil drain back holes in the piston groove that are under the oil control ring. Not sure if that makes the oil control ring sit proud in the groove and it scrubs the piston walls creating blowby past compression ring.

But it's all a moot point at 280,000 miles.

Here's something kooky. My 07 which has been on high quality m1 oil all its life started to use a tiny bit of all around 90k miles. So I moved up to a higher viscosity oil. That helped a little but after one oil change I slightly overfilled it and was too lazy to do anything about it. But after carefullyn watching it over time this slight overfill has stopped its oil loss.it hasn't moved in 5000 miles. Very odd. But true.