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Old 11-15-2005, 12:33 AM
JeromeP JeromeP is offline
Pretty Darn Active Enthusiast
 
Location: Eastern Washington State
Hybrids: 2005 Toyota Prius
Posts: 442
Default Re: Oil Change/Recall Campaign woes

I'll start with the oil "overfill". If you have read the myriad of posts at PriusChat about this, and the myriad of posts at PriusOnline and the post here about that subject, it is safe to say the jury is still out, and probably will never return because there is no absolutely correct answer. However the problem with the Prius and oil changes and oil sump quantity is the fact that oil is sold in quarts here and probably is sold in another measure in Japan (metric i'm sure) and as such the car being metric and our measure being English leads to a sump with is speced at 3.9 quarts, but actually will hold 4 quarts without issue. .10 quart is about a shot glass, maybe 2 of fluid. Spread out across the entire surface area of the sump area this amounts to an insignificant "overfill". The tech was wrong, the dipstick indicates that the sump is over the dot, however this is not a condition to worry about. I do full 4 qt. oil changes and have no issues with the "overfill". True overfill would have very noticeable effects. Using 4qt vs 3.5 or 3.9 qt is pretty meaningless. And frankly, I think it is foolish to run the sump below full.

As for the SSC50P, did you bring in the letter from Toyota when you asked for the service to be acomplished? Dealers do not universally make a point of reading the daily alerts from Toyota. As such, we as drivers, are often times much more informed than they are because we read these forums and some members of these forums are also techs and have connections to Toyota documentation and notices. I'm very glad for there presence on the forums and the advice and documentation they provide. Anyway, if you didn't present the recall letter to the service advisor, he probably wasn't aware of it and as such you got the reaction you did. If the dealer did the SSC correctly there should be an "adjustment" sticker under the hood, towards the rear edge of the open hood. Some dealers will put the adjustment sticker on the drivers "B" pillar near the vehicle cert sticker or the tire pressure sticker. They shouldn't put it there, but they do. If you don't see the sticker, refer back to your work order/invoice and see what comments were made. If they directly reference the SSC50p go on with life and do not worry. If something comes up in the future, you have documentation in hand that says it was performed. If it wasn't, then the fault is on the dealer and Toyota.

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