Oil Consumption Issues - Thinking to switch to 5W-40 need advice

congrats, you're smarter than the pepboys idiots. 5w40 or even 15w40 is fine for south california. but even more important is checking oil at every fueling and adding oil to the full line. any oil is much better than no oil.

 

Your analysis of the advice you got from the boys at Pep Boys is about right. However, I'm afraid 5W-40 wouldn't reduce consumption more than slightly. You could try it---or 10W-30 or 0W-40 or something else, but it won't matter much.

By "consumes about half of it" between your 3000-mile oil changes, do you mean using half of all the oil in the engine, or halfway down from the full to the low mark on the dipstick? The latter wouldn't be so bad. Just add as necessary to keep the level between the marks.

 

how do you know? have you tried?

 

welcome to priuschat! agree with the above, learn to check your oil level and figure out how much you are actually burning. also, there is no way to tell if the oil is 'dirty' without an analysis. just because it goes in clear and comes out brown doesn't mean anything. all the best!

 

As long as the oil consumption isn't more than a quart every 1000 miles you shouldn't worry about replacing the gas
engine just yet. Some engines burn oil, some don't. You lost the lottery.

What you do need to do is monitor the oil level and top off as needed. I know it's a pain to check the level after every two fill ups but you can still buy a lot of motor oil for $2000.

 

Does moderate to high oil consumption leaded to failed catalytic converters? Just curious.

 

Once the oil consumption reaches 1 qt every 500 miles, yes. iodenise isn't close to that bad of consumption, yet.

There was a Priuschat member who had horrendous oil consumption with his Prius but his screen name eludes me
at the moment. He had over 200K miles on his, maybe more. Don't remember. Too forgetful (and old).

 

+1

 

0W40 may be worth a try next time. Or 5W30. Are you sure it isn't a 5W20 requirement for your car.

 

Sounds like Pepboys doesn't carry 5w40 bulk for oil changes and didn't want to open ones from inside the store. There aren't a lot of cars that spec that weight. As others have said move up to higher weight oil and see if it helps.

I'd probably keep topping off the car instead of repairing it. Unless you do the repair yourself, the math to do the repair wouldn't make sense unless consumption were really high. Say it costs $200 to fix whatever. Well that's 100 quarts of oil. That could go a long ways and something else on the car would break before then.

 

I am assuming the "mechanics" are the Pepboys folks? "Low" can mean different things to different people, and without a quantitative measure, all of us are just taking shots in the dark. My *guess* is that the oil is on the low end of the range by the time you get your oil changed. The top end of the range on the dipstick is about 3.9 quarts, the bottom end is about 3 quarts. So, if you are reading on the bottom end and you filled up to the top line, then you are burning about a quart in 3,000 miles. That is not outrageous. Some Prii don't burn any, some burn as much as yours, but either condition is considered to be "normal." I can't remember exactly off the top of my head, but I think Toyota only considers it an issue if you're burning more than 1 quart per 1,000 miles.

I don't have any hard numbers to back up this claim, but I think you are very unlikely to see significant improvements by switching to a more viscous oil. You may go from buying 1 quart every 3,000 to burning 0.9 quarts every 3,000 (again, numbers made up), but I doubt the difference will be significant enough to justify the switch. Either way, if you wanted to, you can make the switch for an oil change safely. You can go from 5w-30 to 5w-40 and back again, no problems.

TL;DR

1. Check your oil levels yourself. If you are within the fill lines, you are not "low."
2. You can switch to 5w-40 without blowing up your car. It will be fine, but I doubt the improvement in oil consumption will be significant.

 

The technology of synthetic oil. How is synthetic oil made?
Nothing to loose but going up little. I would not over do it. 5W30 and 0W40 is worth a shot in hot climates.
Remember a hybrid needs low turn over start viscosity all the time. It needs the lower number for easy engine turn over.