Paul - As stated, I stopped working in Oct '04 so I never had experience with any '05 models and, oddly enough, only saw 1 Hybrid while I was there and that was a Prius and it really was shocking to drive the first time - whisper quiet and smooth - little did I know I would later own a HCH-II. =) Anyway, on the 4-cyl Toyota engines the oil filter (very small by the way almost like a 6 oz juice glass for breakfast) is UNDERNEATH the exhaust headers which are in the front if the engine.

This means you get to reach down and between the radiator and exhaust headers then bend your wrist toward the back of the engine and put your fingers only on the filter as you can't get your hand on it due to the cramped space and hot exhaust parts. Sometimes we had to use a small ratchet-type device on a ratchet wrench which gave us the automatic 90-degree bend that our wrist would normally make. Lots of 1st and 2nd degree burns on our wrists, forearms, hands, and fingers due to this layout (and the Honda where the oil filter is above the exhaust headers which are in the back of the engine).

Not ALL the Toyota and Honda cars were like this but many of them are but in both of these cases there was usually oil dripped onto the exhaust parts which smoked for several miles and many customers returned to complain about this. Sometimes we would cover the exhaust parts iwth 5 rags to soak up the oil before it would smoke on the exhaust but this was not always possible. Then there were the trucks and Subaru cars that had undertrays that would catch the oil and leak later on the customer's driveway.

Yes we were asked by customers to clean their driveway from oil leaks and yes our company required us to do this or re-rotate tires if the person swapped the front to the front and rear to rear instead of front-to-rear, etc. We ended up doing maybe 30% redo service because of "user error" - i.e. "My wipers are squeaking so I want another set" when it is just that the wipers are not conformed to their windshield profile and using them for a day constantly will do the trick but we are supposed to replace another set of $20 wiper blades for free just to make that customer satisfied. I didn't mind fixing cars but I hated to turn away a good, paying customer for a whiney, annoying customer.

Agreed that not all places are the same and I am not sticking up for any of the bad shops. We had a Tech who would vacuum out cars and steal change from the ashtrays. That Tech did not work there much longer. Every place is to be watched but we did not sell $100 services and never perform them. Our issue was that we would sell so many services that we ran out of time in the day to perform them all and many times had to refund the customer for what they paid on that service because we didn't do it and recommended that they could perform it in another 3,000 miles instead.