Break-In advice

Oil change at 5000 miles as recommended in the owner's manual is probably sufficient. 3000 if you are obsessive like some of us. The 1000 mile recommendation was for engines built in earlier years, without benefit of present-day manufacturing process and materials.

 

No, nothing in the manual other than the 5K intervals. My dealer gave me a complimentary oil and filter change at 1K, but I wouldn't have done it then if I had had to pay for it.

 

Oil change

Keep in mind, northwest, that the ICE only runs part of the time, particularly at around-town speeds. Miles is not equivalent to engine hours as on conventional cars. Look on here for several threads on Used Oil Analysis for good discussions of oil change practice. If you follow the Toyota recommended maintenance schedule you have nothing to worry about (for about 60,000 miles).

And welcome to PriusChat! Where in the NW are you? (hint: complete your profile)

 

Those early oil changes back in the good old days were more about poor hygiene of manufacturing processes in the days of old. There was not a lot of attention given to cleaning parts such as engine block casting after machining, well not as much as there should have been.* Also the tolerances in a modern engine are so much smaller that engines require very little running in and wear inside modern engines isn't all that much worse over the first 5000k than at the 10th 5000k. Most of the improvement in economy realised over the run in period is the oil seals reducing their tight grip on shafts in engine, transmission water pump etc.

If Toyota say the first oil change needs to be done at 5000k then doing it any earlier is just going to take a little money from your pocket and add another 3.5 litres of waste oil (and a filter) to the waste stream.

*an example of this was the tendancy of mid 80s 6 cylinder Ford Falcons to clog up the radiator after about 50,000km here in Australia. The problem was casting sand not cleaned out of the iron block was dislodging into the coolant stream and settling in the bottom of the radiator side tank blocking the core tubes. I have seen up to 2 cups of contaminants removed from a radiator. This doesn't seem to happen these days.

 

My 2 cents... I had my oil changed at 1050 miles. I guess I'm from the old school.

Marvin

 

It all depends on the health of the motor. Conventional wisdom would state most of the wear will be during the first 1,000-3,000 miles. Most modern motors no longer are built so poorly.

As an example, the EU market VW's running EU spec ACEA motor oils, have a normal oil change interval up to 2 years or 30,000 miles. There is no early initial change. How many of them explode?

However, some motors are different. My FJ Cruiser is one, dealer was pretty adamant about the initial oil change at 2,000 km. With the Prius, the dealer was adamant about waiting the entire 8,000 km

I did an oil sample at 2,000 km, and the FJ oil was clearly used up and ready for an immediate change. What I found surprising is that the dealer 5W-30 sheared quite badly over 6,000km as well. No problems with Mobil 1 0W-40 or Esso XD-3 0W-40

With the data collected on this forum, the Prius is quite fine to leave the first oil change to 5,000 miles

 

I changed at 1100, and again at 4600. There was a light grey film on the dipstick, under the clear original oil at 1100, so an assembly lube is apparently used. I will continue to change at 3500 intervals, with a synthetic blend 5w-30. With full synthetic I still would only go to 5000, as this is what the warranty requires. I think low oil temp (sludge/water formation tendency) in the Prius may be an issue in the short trip driving I do.