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Originally Posted by jayv72
Just out of curiousity how often do you guys change your oil? I know the manual says every 10,000 miles, but that seems like an awful lot.
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i'm a low-mileage driver... typically only 4-5k a year.
in theory, i should get an oil change on my Prius twice a year. i usually let it go longer.
the last two or three oil changes, i switched the car to synthetic, and plan to leave it in the car for about 7500 miles.
your oil change interval really should be based on the kind of driving you do. if it's all highway and you drive a lot of miles per year, you could probably go a year or more without a change, since the engine virtually always will get up to full operating temperature and run a lot of the crankcase blow-by junk, etc., back through the PCV valve and out the tailpipe.
if you do lots of really short trips [i had a 1.7-mile one-way commute for nearly 20 years!], the engine never gets fully warm, and you should probably opt for at least 2, maybe 3 changes per year.
yes, if you look at my signature, the math looks wrong on my 4-5k claim, but those 18k miles included three times 'cross-country, from CA to NC to CA to NC last summer and fall... i got an oil change when i arrived in NC, then when i got back to NC again, after 2x cross-country. car didn't seem to mind at all. just starting to really get broken in, now, too...
imnsho...
