In preparation for our first road trip, a milk run to see Ann's dad near Dayton, I did the first oil change on the Prius (oil changed on 6/16/07 at 952 miles with a Mobil 1 filter). After reading a lot of good things about Trop Artic semi-synthetic oil at Bob is the Oil Guy I decided to give it a shot. It's also dirt cheap at Wally World at $1.68 a quart.
I also bought a pair of Rhino Ramps. While it would be possible to change the oil on the Prius without them, these low, plastic ramps really made the job a breeze.
With the oil change done we hit the road.
On the way down I was getting better mileage than I expected, a tad over 53mpg, going mostly 69mph on the interstate. I filled up the car before the start of the trip just to see how well the Prius does on highway-only driving.
I also made a little video of the MFD on way down, while Abba was playing on the iPod:
While we were visiting Ann's friend a micro storm blew through the area. The winds took down their flagpole, barely missing the Prius:
The trip back saw some increases in MPG as I was able to get to 54.1MPG from 53.8 from the first leg. I averaged 65mph on the way back. It's too soon to tell if we'll see increases in MPG with the Trop Artic oil. I was careful to use 3.5 quarts as it appeared to me the car may have been overfilled with factory oil.
Here's a screen shot of the MFD from our arrival in Medway (top) and our arrival back in Akron:
