Hello to all Prius heads, Like my title says, what is it that I should do to keep this green beast purring with high mpg. This is my first Prius. All my previous cars were diesels. Thanks,
congrats! the most important place to start is cleaning the egr circuit and intake manifold before you blow a head gasket. adding an oil catch can would also be a great idea. keep an eye on the oil level until you are convinced it is not burning any all the best!
Clean EGR circuit & manifold, install OCC, change spark plugs, drain & fill both coolants, drain & fill 0w-20 synthetic oil.
have you looked up the maintenance history? a major should be done at 120k i think. some like to change the tranny fluid
Welcome to Prius Chat . Are you the DIY type? In addition to the suggestions above, a transmission fluid drain and fill should be added . Did you just buy this? If so, look to clean the hv battery fan. Good luck and keep us posted .
...also consider clubbing down to a 5k Oil Change interval. You're in LA. Unless that stands for Lower Alabama, start saving now for a catalytic converter and stay away from the dealerships for maintenance!
This is a quick run though of my Prius. Maybe you will go though some of the same things. I bought a 2010 with 163k on it. The Toyota maintenance website said it had the sparkplugs done at 120k and some sort of oil test done and something was rethreaded. I have put just over 5k (168k~)miles on it and did a oil change about 1k ago. I have not noticed any oil level drops, yet. (Supposedly it's very common for any year Prius to burn oil) The windows or something seem to rattle and role down slightly (can roll them up some, sometimes makes the rattling stop) The exhaust tip is covered in carbon, the rear wheel wells had sand or something all over them. MPG time. My Prius likes it when it's 60 deg out and raining, for better mpg. The best I ever got was some 90mpg~ doing 30mph on some hilly backroads, over 5 miles. (I'm not sure how I even did it) My commute is 10 miles each way with 45-60mph speed limits and a fair amount of stops. I average about 39mpg per tank. 46/44 psi, but recently in this bad weather, (40 deg rainstorms) I have gone back to sticker psi. I haven't touched the EGR. The Intake manifold looked pretty clean. I would say, despite my Prius burning oil, needing better tires, needing a alignment after that pothole, lots of rattling, not very comfortable for 6ft+ people. I like it. I will keep it until it dies.
I’d add an oil catch can and clean the egr circuit stem to stern. You don’t want to set the bomb off. Take care of that and it’ll take care of you for a long time.
