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Poorly designed dipstick

Discussion in 'Gen 3 Prius Care, Maintenance & Troubleshooting' started by web1b, Sep 10, 2011.

  1. web1b

    web1b Active Member

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    Why does oil smear along the dipstick making it nearly impossible to read the "true" oil level? I have never had this issue checking oil on previous vehicles.
    I read another post saying the trick is to let the car sit overnight and then pull the stick out. You have 1 chance to read the stick. If you try wiping the stick and reinserting it to recheck, you will not be able to read it properly because oil will smear along it.
    Is it the stick design or is the dip stick tube too small or something?
    The stick should probably also be painted a different color (white?) or perhaps be very matte instead of shiny so the oil doesn't look so close to invisible against the metal.

    Maybe it's time for oil dipsticks to go away completely and have some other method of seeing the oil level. Some cars already have already eliminated dipsticks.
     
  2. Mendel Leisk

    Mendel Leisk Senior Member

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    Yes, I found ours hard to read, very prone to smearing. Our son was by recently with our ex '06 Civic and I checked his oil level: a walk in the park: definite, obvious line, no smear.

    With our Prius I suss it out eventually, but it takes multiple tries. Trying flipping it over, one side is sometimes marginally better. Hardest to read right after a change, with near-clear oil.

    Another trick: just push it in to the beginning of the plastic handle, and see how much the elusive level has dropped. Sometimes a moving target is easier to spot.

    We had a newish Civic loaner lately, while our Prius got minor bodywork: it had an all-plastic dipstick, maybe white? It was about double the usual dipstick width. That seems to help.
     
  3. The Electric Me

    The Electric Me Go Speed Go!

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    Excellent thoughts and ideas.

    It's not just a Prius or Toyota problem. With the use of more lightweight synthetics the oils have become lighter and thinner...thus reading the level on a lot of dipsticks is devilishly hard.

    It's like an episode of CSI for me to get a decent reading on what my oil level is on my Honda Fit after a synthetic oil change. The level is almost invisible against the bare metal of the dipstick.

    There has to be a better way.
     
  4. web1b

    web1b Active Member

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    Actually, it is a Prius problem. The problem is not only that the oil is clear. The problem is that oil smears all along the dipstick when you insert and remove the stick. So, even if you can see this difficult to see oil against the light, you can't reliably read the level because there is not a sharp line of oil on the dipstick ending cleanly at a point on the stick like with other cars.
     
  5. Roadburner440

    Roadburner440 Member

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    I was aggrivated by this in the beginning as well, BUT I feel that I have found a solution to this. Usually when I do my usual inspection routine I take the distick out, wipe it clean, and place it on top of the radiator. Then wait about 5 minutes or so for the extra oil to go back down into the oil pan. During this time I take the tire pressures, and check the inverter/computer coolant levels and such. By the time I am done, I put the oil dipstick in, pull it out, and voila! No smear. Granted it only works that 1 time, so if you want to read the level a second time (to compare) you need to wait another 2-5 minutes. Is what works for me though. Hopefully it will help you guys out. Also do it at the gas pump as well. Pop the hood, pull out the stick, place a rag/paper towel over the tube to stop debris from going in, and then check the level after fueling. A major pain, but like I said it works. This is the only car I have ever had like this as well as far as difficulty in checking the oil level.
     
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  6. web1b

    web1b Active Member

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    Since this smearing problem is not an issue on most other cars, it is something that Toyota can and should fix and should have noticed before the car was released for sale.
    Redesign the dipstick or the dipstick tube so the stick doesn't catch/drag/smear oil as you insert and remove the stick.
     
  7. El Dobro

    El Dobro A Member

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    I went out and checked mine and really didn't have a problem, the oil was right up to the second dot. All I can tell you is the Prius dipstick is state of the art compared to a VW dipstick. Talk about hard to read.
     
  8. web1b

    web1b Active Member

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    I just went out and checked mine after the car was sitting overnight. The level showed being right at the top max fill dot.
    I wiped the dipstick and rechecked and, because of oil smearing on the stick, the level now appeared to be way overfilled.
     
  9. The Electric Me

    The Electric Me Go Speed Go!

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    Nit picky. Maybe the smearing of the dipstick is specific to The Prius. But my point is that I think the entire industry needs to be more attentive to the problem of hard to read dipsticks.

    For the most part, I think it has to do with the growing and widespread use of synthetics which are generally thinner and stay clearer longer.

    I can't say The Honda Fit dipstick "smears"...but it's a devil to read in anycase.

    Just seems to me, that either in dipstick, dipstick tube design, or otherwise, manufacturers have gotten lazy and perhaps not adjusted to the reality that things have changed. It's no longer like the past when most people were running Dino Oil, which generally was heavier and quickly would show contanimates that made the oil easily visible.

    The Prius might need a specific redesign to address the smearing issue, but in general I think Oils and Filters have improved..while dipsticks and how we measure oil level has not.
     
  10. El Dobro

    El Dobro A Member

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  11. GrumpyCabbie

    GrumpyCabbie Senior Member

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    Nothing to do with Toyota or the Prius. Many modern cars have similar issues. I have checked the oil on more cars than I care to remember and many, but not all, are difficult to read.

    You sure your problem is nothing to do with the nut behind the steering wheel? ;)
     
  12. Roadburner440

    Roadburner440 Member

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    We have personally had a few new cars over the last couple years (06 Mazda Speed6, 08 Pontiac GP GXP, 07 Magnum SRT-8, and our 04 Trailblazer) and I have not had any issues reading the dipstick on any of those vehicles. The Prius however is my first car with full synthetic oil. It may just be I am overly attentive to the car since I have never had a hybrid before. Always do my own auto work though, and the dipstick smearing was one of the first things that caught my attention. As I said before I have found just waiting a few minutes after you remove the stick to re-insert, and read. It has cured the issue for me.
     
  13. web1b

    web1b Active Member

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    ??? Just because another car has a similar problem doesn't mean it has nothing to do with the Prius. The Prius has this issue and most cars do not.
     
  14. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    I've had it on most of the cars possessed during my adult life.

    For some reason it has seemed worse when the cars were young. Maybe that is why I didn't notice any such problem when I was young and drove only old cars.
     
  15. GrumpyCabbie

    GrumpyCabbie Senior Member

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    Maybe it's because in Europe we have used fully synthetic oil on virtually all cars for the last 10-15 years? That's why we've had 10k, 15k & 20k mile service intervals for this period too whereas Toyota USA have only recently (last year?) introduced the 10k mile oil change interval on the Prius.
     
  16. web1b

    web1b Active Member

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    You're not getting that it's isn't the oil. So, if other cars use similar oil, they don't necessarily have this specific issue. It is the smearing of oil up along the dipstick.
    Even if there was no smearing, it could be a bit hard to read the level of clear oil, but not impossible. The smearing makes the oil level appear to be much higher than it it actually is.
     
  17. JimN

    JimN Let the games begin!

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    Maybe old eyes are part of the problem. Maybe the dipstick should go back to being a flat stick. Something the diameter of a small cable with a bob at the end doesn't work well. If Toyota engineers are listening to our whining they will eliminate the dipstick in favor of dashboard lights. Have the amber one light when the oil is sufficiently dirty & have the red light when oil pressure is low.

    What's a Scotsman to do when the dipstick is a thing of the past?
     
  18. web1b

    web1b Active Member

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    How hard would it be to design the car with overfill protection that would let the oil go pour out if it was overfilled by the tech during the oil change and then have a warning light if it was underfilled?
    The car I had before this one didn't have a dipstick. It had low oil warning light. I don't know what it does for overfilling.
     
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  19. Mendel Leisk

    Mendel Leisk Senior Member

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    I don't think the smearing can be blamed on synthetic. I'm currently checking the oil on both a 2006 Civic Hybrid and our Prius. They are using the same Toyota 0w20. The Civic dipstick shows a definitive and clear high oil mark, the Prius dipstick has oil running way up along the edges, 1~2 inches past the full mark. The actual high mark is very difficult to read.
     
  20. web1b

    web1b Active Member

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    I let the car sit overnight again and rechecked the oil. Looks like the dealership overfilled the oil at the oil change I had yesterday, but now I'm not 100% certain because of this ridiculous dipstick. The right side of the dipstick looks "very" overfilled (but might be false level because of smearing) and the back side of it looks just slightly overfilled, but it is so difficult to tell because there is no clean line where the oil ends.