Measured oil consumption. How is it doing?

These threads will always give you varying answers as everyone does this differently.

On a used high mileage car, I like to change the oil more often, using Dino oil. Since your car burns oil, I wouldn't want to keep putting expensive oil in it. Keep the synthetics for cars that don't burn much oil.

Half a quart every 1000 miles is really nothing to worry about.

 

That seems a little on the high side. Your cat converter will fail sooner or later because of this amount of oil

 

Mine also uses some oil, not as much as yours though. But I might be driving slower (overall) on the highway, and higher speeds may correlate to increased consumption.

Generally use a thicker synthetic and change it around 5k or whenever possible, oil is cheap (when on sale) and a new engine/cat not so much.

 

Move up to 5-40 it will help.

 

I put rotella T6 10 or 15w40 in my 2005 years ago. It's still running and has over 310k miles. I always joke with my family members that still drive it, telling the to just dump anything in the crack case just make sure the oil level isn't low!

Maybe honey, or blueberry syrup next?? Lol

 

For almost 200k miles, still moving under its own power is an accomplishment as most cars are in the junkyard by then.

My only experience with significant oil consumption was an 80s Ford that used a quart about every 800 miles at 100k miles. The converter was fine, but the EGR valve got fouled and stuck closed.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

Yes, but any place I see actual data on the number of cars over 200K miles, like [[ bad link removed ]] it's all in the single digit %. Still, that means millions of cars do last more than 200K miles, but that's out of half a billion vehicles on the road.

World wide lots of people live to be 100 years old, but that doesn't mean you can say most people will see 100.

For every car that hits 200K miles, there's probably several that were totalled out before then, or rusted out after 20 years of low mileage driving, etc.

 

Lol

 

Here's another attempt at posting that link. (click on the word "link")

Silly board kept expanding it to many pages of HTML

 

The consequences will be it Will use less oil. And use cheapest Dino oil you can find 40 weight.

 

You don’t need a change interval it’s changing itself at the rate your losing it.
Hence the cheap 40 weight oil.

 

Wrong.

 

I've noticed that the cars most likely to go over 200k miles are driven a lot, like 40k - 50k a year, so that age doesn't become a factor. Your Prius should easily reach 200k, and that means you'll have more mileage than 98.9% of the Prius on the road (or more likely, 98.9% of used Priii for sale, which is where they got those numbers if I'm not mistaken).

200k may not be a rare thing, but certainly if you weren't dilligent at checking and adding oil your post would have been "is it worth replacing the siezed engine in my 11 year old Prius?" Point is it's still a big milestone and you can take some of the credit for it.

 

Oil weight is not a recommended method to address oil consumption by any OEM. Simple fact is and the OP got this right, the engine is DESIGNED for 10w-30. Considering 0.5qt/1,000 miles is completely normal consumption, there is no logical reason to change anything.

Can 15w-40 be used in a Prius? Sure. Do it in a cold climate and you likely won't have to worry about changing it again as the oil starvation to the valvetrain will likely kill it the first winter.

 

Yes 15w-40 is not a good idea in cold climate. But you can get 10w-40, 5w-40, and even 0w-40 oils.

European version of gen 2 Prius owner’s manual does says it’s ok to use 15w-40 if it’s not cold or even 20w-50 in hot temperatures.

Difference between Xw-30 and Xw-40 can also be basically nothing as at 100c or 212F Xw-30 is between 9.3 and 12.5CSt and Xw-40 is between 12.5 and 16.3CSt. And that’s just one temperature as the thickness changes with temperature.

If engine is worn enough that oil pressure is effected thicker oil can be used to get the pressure closer to normal value.