2008 Prius burning oil and need options...

There's a hybrid shop in Orange county that advertises prius engines installed for about $1300. But there's no guarantees that used engine will be any better than yours.

And of course the battery, is always a concern. 2008 batteries are not as well built as a 2004. So it probably would fail or leak during the time your 18 year old has it in college.

I'd sell it and buy something you know will be reliable for your kid.

 

change your PVC valve (look up how too video on you tube) part is about $10 and the labor is just over an hour.

might help.

 

My 2006 Prius had the same issue. Tried many cheap fixes and non of them worked. Finally, I had to have the engine rebuilt ($5.5K) with a brand new short block in 2013. The repair was performed by Toyotech of Montclair, CA. They took their time (1 week) and did an excellent job. Due to internal engine oil burning issue, the catalytic converter and its associated sensors ($1.6K) may also need to be replaced in the near future. A new HV battery installed will cost around $3.4K at Longo Toyota.

 

Your rebuilt engine was $5500?

 

so you put 10 grand into a 10 year old car that's worth 4? I have some stuff to sell you.

 

maybe it was in pesos

 

Try a heavier weight oil. Start with 10-30. If you see some improvement, try 10-40 and see what happens.

 

I got mine replaced for $1200 in orange county with a 80k mile engine. 20k miles later, and it's still good.. not consuming any oil as of yet.

 

How do you know the engine had 80k miles? It's what they told you?

 

1. Give your daughter a better car (not sure the Prius C qualifies ), and you keep the 2008 since you can trust yourself (but not her) to keep an eye on the engine oil level. Also there is a lot of drama in college and your daughter doesn't need to have one more source.

2. When my wife and I gave our daughter a Prius six years ago upon college graduation, we gave her the 2007 instead of the 2004 because my wife reasonably pointed out that I would do a much better job of keeping the 2004 running than our daughter could.

3. I would not install a reconditioned engine because the cost is high compared to the market value of your car. When the oil consumption gets bad, install a used engine or get rid of the car.

4. If the oil consumption is low enough that you would be able to take care of the maintenance during semester breaks, then it seems like it is not really much of a problem - unless your daughter plans to drive all over the country on spring break.

 

Given the complexity of a hybrid, I do NOT think this is a good choice for a kid going off to school.
ESPECIALLY not one that uses that much oil.

I suggest that an inspection by a good mechanic would be in order first, mainly to be sure it is not leaking oil or sucking it into the intake via the PCV system.

 

The new short Toyota engine block itself was around $1.9K. Then there were other surrounding Toyota parts such as water pump, timing chain, gaskets etc. The most expansive part was the labor, which also included a typical valve job and other miscellaneous repairs/maintenance around the engine itself.

 

I've put 4k into replacing the battery and IC pump in mine, and when it was in the accident, the insurance company sunk another 4k to make necessary repairs. I'm keeping this thing until it dies of old age

 

I checked the VIN of the car and they pulled it from the car, and put it into mine same day. Most of their engines have higher miles though.

 

No way I would EVER replace an OEM engine with a "rebuilt", no rebuilder has anywhere near the quality controls of an OEM; no not even almost close.

A used engine from a breaking yard is the best option short of regular oil topping.

DO NOT simply use thicker oil and high mileage oil is a hoax. All thicker oil will do is starve the bearings and cams of necessary lubrication longer after a restart. Well I guess in some abnormal way, that would solve the consumption problem.... when the connecting rod shoots out the side of the engine, you won't have to worry about adding more oil.

 

What a bunch of bunk.

You have no way of knowing what the quality controls are for every shop that rebuilds engines.
And for that matter, you have no way of knowing that for the OEMs either.

And a slight adjustment upward in the oil weight will hurt absolutely nothing.
Actually the opposite is true; a thicker oil will stay in worn bearings longer than thin stuff.

And "high mileage" oil is no miracle but it is far from a hoax.

What other bad advice do you have to offer ??

 

Somebody could theoretically rebuild engine with even smaller tolerances than new OEM. But probably not because it would be too expensive.

Slightly thicker oil (on hot side) might bring the oil pressure up to original speck for new engine. But it might not reduce oil consumption at all (depends on where and how oil gets through). And going up more than one step (like replacing Xw-30 with Xw-40) might be too much.

If you keep the cold viscosity at the same level like replacing the 5w-30 with 5w-40 cold viscosity is still the same and lubrication at start up still works fine.

High mileage oils can help if the problem is oil leak through seals. Oil can leak through seals to outside of engine or to inside of engine (and eventually out of exhaust) through valve stem seals. High mileage oil will slowly help the seals get back there softness. But of course the effect is small so it might not have measurable effect.

I’m still with you on that replacing the engine with good used one is the best way to stop the oil consumption. But before that you should check that it’s not consuming oil because of bad PCV-valve.

 

Actually I do, in both respects.

As an example, the head tooling for a common OEM v8 cost a couple MILLION, mostly because of the surface flatness and finish requirements, not really driven by production volumes. The "rebuilders" were not even interested in the specifications, until they started seeing failures.

Actually.... completely FALSE. A common term for the affect oil lubrication has is "hydrodynamic wedge", while not the whole story and certainly promulgated by one oil vendor, it is generally accurate. Oil FLOW creates component separation, not pressure. How can that be true? MEPs are modern engines are in the 125-150 PSI range, for a typical 1NZ engine with a piston are of ~6.3 in^2, you get (neglecting friction) about 787 - 945 lb of pressure on the rod., lets use 850 lbs as a reasonable compromise.

The 1NZ has a 0.529" wide rod bearing running on a 1.5745 journal, for a total area of 2.61 in^2. However, only about 33% of the bearing's surface can be used to support the downward pressure exerted on it, meaning that the effective area is much closer to 0.86 in^2 in operation.

Therefore, to use oil PRESSURE as the means of component separation would require 850/0.86 = 988 psi at the bearing.

Yea, NOT.

All the pressure in the world is useless without flow when speaking of bearings. Now, loss of pressure due to wear will increase flow, but is still bad for the engine if the minimum pressure at load falls below that required by the engine design. Generally this is about 10 PSI per 1000 rpm, however some engines are designed for no more than 30 PSI at full load.

Looks like the shoe is on the other foot eh?

 

But thicker oil is harder to move. Thicker oil will cause the thin end of "hydrodynamic wedge" to be thicker. That’s because oil is bough harder to move out of bearing and harder to move forward in the bearing.
Increasing the oil pressure isn’t the main function of thicker oil. But increasing the oil pressure back to original value will help other parts like timing chain tensioner VVTi-actuator etc.

Anyways we are talking about slight increase in viscosity. Like replacing Xw-30 with Xw-40. In hot conditions Toyota recommends 15w-40 or even 20w-50 oil. Is 10w30 oil really ok? | Page 4 | PriusChat

So switching from 5w-30 to 5w-40 won’t be causing any engine trouble.