Had a little off-road oops...

There's not a level sensor on 2nd gens, 3rd gens have one I believe.
Toyota stuff has always been pretty basic, alot of newer vehicles will sound an alarm for critical failures but I haven't seen that on a Toyota.

 

Don't need to. Keep up with your maintenance and at 300,000 miles your engine will still run like it's brand new.

 

Yea the low oil pressure light more often than not is more of a "your engine is toast" light than a warning light, depends on the engine but most engines aren't gona run more than about 30 secs without oil pressure at anything more than an idle without damage.

 

Had a lady come in maybe 4 months ago, in a Prius, 20,000 miles overdue for an oil change. Recommended it. She denied it. "it's a Prius, it doesnt need oil"

Ok ma'am. It's your car ....

 

We had a Civic come in one time for an oil pressure light being on, it was overdue for an oil change so we went to change oil on it and it didn't have anymore than a cup full of oil in it between what was in the filter and the few drops that came out of the drain.
Lady is still driving it 4 years later.

 

I wonder what the cam journals look like

I see a lot of VVT related codes caused by oil consumption and low oil level. CEL coming on kinda serves as a warning to get the customer's attention. After that it only gets more expensive with actual damage to the valvetrain

 

Don't know but she drove it up there with no oil in it and she's still driving it, it's had 2 transmissions put in it but still original engine as far as I know.

Yea the GM 2.4 Ecotec comes to mind

 

No thank you.
Though I can see the potential benefit, that's a feature I feel is unnecessary for me.