My 2010 Prius, It's official, 1qt oil every 4,000 miles

I have a 2010 Prius engine sitting around in my dads garage. it has a blown headgasket. It also had rapid oil consumption before the gasket failed. we reaplaced the engine ourselves, but we never got around to messing with the old engine

 

Total waste of time.
Not a big enough change to accomplish anything.
A 15W40 "high mileage" oil might help and will hurt absolutely NOTHING.

But then, just adding a quart as needed won't hurt anything either.

 

I remember using 10w 30 in a v6 from 5w 30. Bogged the truck down. 15w in the Prius.
Lucus oil treatment, the stuff that helps the oil stick to the parts may help too.
I add a little every oil change to my 04 Prius with 238,000. Probably a half quart in 5000 miles with the 5w-30.

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15w in the Prius would be thick.

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I wish that my biggest worry in life was a car that burns 1 quart of oil every 4k miles. I only have about a BILLION other things that are above that on my list of things keeping me busy..............what happens when all this work is done and it still burns the same? What if it burns more? What if the timing chain does slip? IMHO, the risk/reward on this is heavily skewed to the bad side, but I wish you the best of luck.

 

I was kind of assuming the OP was planning to do this work themselves.
In which case I say why not?

Sure you can live easily with the oil consumption rate but some people like to try to keep their vehicles in better shape. If car maintenance and repair is something you enjoy as nearly a hobby?

Then the oil consumption is a good excuse to do some work.

If I was paying out of pocket to have someone else do the work? I might just decide to live with it a while longer.

 

That's what I thought reading your original post.
If that's the case, while sure, many people would simply add oil and keep driving.
I say if you want to go fishing?
Go fishing.

It's different if you are doing the work because you enjoy doing the work, and different if you are only paying for parts, and doing the labor yourself.

Have fun.

 

No it won't be anything like "contaminated". Mixing different weights of the same brand of oil is perfectly fine. Highly likely that mixing different weights of different brands will be fine too.

And I think you over-estimate how "thick" 15W40 oil will be. It is designed to behave like 15 weight when COLD.

AND high mileage engines tend to be "loose" and probably will "like" a slightly thicker oil.

 

Oil will burn from pcv, rings and valve seals.

 

EGR clogged up on the blown gasket motor?

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I enjoy 0W-40 mobil1 in all my prius'. Save $12 on every 5-quart jug using the online coupon from mobil one website that that pops up 4 times a year. So I paid $13 per 5-quart jug. Mobil 1 is one of the better oils but this is definitely the best price and 0w40 doesn't burn too quick. I would get to 5 W 40 oil for summer time use but I'm concerned about the quantity of zinc which might destroy my catalytic converter since 5w 40 is designed for diesels

 

I use 5w-30 full synthetic in our 2010 Prius II with 176 k miles on it and have been using this oil grade since 120 k miles to quell oil consumption .

It has worked for us as our 2010 is at a quart every oil change (10 k miles).

So that’s also an option.

 

So my first Prius I used 5 W 40 but the zinc may have contributed to the catalytic converter failure in the second gen. The Second Jen is also known for cat failures but does think may have accelerated it. In the next two 3rd gen Priuses I use 0w40. This fixed the oil use problem for me

 

My son just purchased a new 2018 Camry and the oil requirement calls for 0w16. Yes, you read it correctly...0w16. How can you not keep an engine from using oil with this thin of oil. Incredible!!!

 

I was at the local toyota dealer Friday picking up some parts and saw it sitting near the parts counter.

I thought the same thing .

I’m keeping a very close eye in our RX450h as it still has 0w-20 in it. At the first sign of oil consumption, I’m clubbing up to 5w-30.

 

Ravenol makes a line of 0w-16 that's an alternative to Toyotas on amazon. So tempting to buy and squeeze all the MPGs out of a turd gen when they first shipped out from factory with 0w-16