Despite the Synthetic Oil requirement, 5000 mile change intervals are still "required"

The question is here. This part that you put in red is the center of the discussion. We don't need to bring the discussion here I think.

The main claim from Valvoline is that Mobil 1 failed the ILSAC GF-4 test on an independent lab. This is what matters. We should investigate if these claims are true.

I hope there is a body in the USA that audits these lab results, and if indeed Mobil 1 fails the tests that supposedly it should pass, then they should be heavily fined.

If on the other hand, the lab results from Valvoline are false, then Valvoline should be finned.

 

Had Mobil and Valvoline pages up also. Note that Mobil/Ford part # is not a match to the big van but is the right oil. New spec. Which is why we have ILSAC and API specs.

Valvoline says 4 times less wear than M1. Any time I see one of these "increase in decrease" type statements I think marketing bull and the the difference is just fractions of a hair. These are all good oils up to their additive lifetimes.

Valvoline.com > Products > Motor Oil > Full Synthetic Motor Oil > SynPower® Full Synthetic Motor Oil

SAE 0W-20: Exceeds all car and light truck manufacturers' warranty requirements for the protection of gasoline, diesel and turbocharged engines where an API SM, SL, or CF oil is recommended. Exceeds European ACEA A1 and all requirements of ILSAC GF-3 and GF-4 for API Gasoline Engine Oils and meets Energy Conserving Standards. Specially designed to provide the highest level of fuel economy to electric hybrid vehicles.

SAE 5W-20: Exceeds all car and light truck manufacturers' warranty requirements for the protection of gasoline, diesel and turbocharged engines where an API SM, SL, or CF oil is recommended. Exceeds European ACEA A1 and all requirements of ILSAC GF-3 and GF-4 for API Gasoline Engine Oils and meets Energy Conserving Standards

 

The issue was dropped last year by the companies. It's chat boards that keep it alive and mix sperate issues together confusing one for the other.
I got "oil" part #'s for Ford(3), GM, Toyota(2), Lexis, Jeep(traded), and Honda in front me but I need just 2 oils, 5w-30 and 5w-20.

 

I was just Googling around and found this Valvoline, the David of synthetic oil, and Mobil 1, the goliath of synthetic oil, going at it head to head. It depends on who is paying for the study. The best I could find out is that Valvoline was paying for the so called independent study. I'm sure they both make a fine oil and over the life of our cars it makes little difference which oil you used. I see Toyota's and Honda's not burning a drop of oil after 400,000 miles on conventional oil. With stnthetic oil, our cars can now outlive their owners. Many OEM's are using Mobil 1 at the factory and that has to upset the good folks at Valvoline. Both have to past tests to meet ILSAC and API specs.

Has Toyota said that we can't use Mobile 1 0W20 in our cars? So far Toyota has been mum on the subject.

Valvoline has this on their website:

Changing oil myself will void my warranty.

Using a brand of oil that is different from your vehicle manufacturer's factory fill will not void the warranty nor will changing the oil yourself. As long as you use an oil that meets the vehicle manufacturer's standards, you will not void the warranty.

Dan

 

I haven't received all the answers to my inquiries yet, but I don't believe it's a pure syn yet!

One of the questions on the q & a sheet:

For more info go to this link.

 

My dealer offers free oil changes for life, including the 0W-20 for the Prius. My question is, what other services are required every 5000 miles so he can get his money back.

Thanks,

Rich N.

 

. . .

 

I took in my own oil for my first oil change (0W30 Mobil #1 and the mechanic gave me back oil and only filled it to 7/8 full (Prius). Nice job!
I Have been doing this since 2003 for my Honda Civic hybrids.

I have not read the whole thread but Mobil was making synthetic oil for cars back in 1973. I would trust them before anyone else on rigged studies. I have noticed that Q syn oil is not as clear as Mobil.

 

I read elsewhere that the requirement is actually 5000 miles, OR 6 months. Is this correct? This, plus the cost, is the nearest thing to a deal breaker for me (I'm also considering a Honda Fit). Will the MID start reminding before 6 months also, or is it up to me to keep track of the date, and be bound to this by the warranty.

It would seem much better if the computer could figure out the needed interval based on driving conditions, rather than use a one size fits all rule. I guess it doesn't? (for the Fit, I read Honda's on-board computer uses sensors and an algorithm to calculate oil life base on the way the car is driven which seems much smarter than a fixed 5000 mile interval). Under the current rule I could not make a round trip New York to California without stopping somewhere along the way for an oil change! If I drove like truckers do, I could need an oil change every week!

My main concern though is I'm probably going to keep my current car for a while. I did this with my last car, keeping the old car as a winter car. This meant my new car mostly sat in the garage for the winter. This could mean I could get my oil changed in the fall, bring the car home and mostly leave it in the garage for the winter, then in the spring need to bring it back to change barely used oil. Actually, I've also read mosture can collect in an engine in storage, and changes before/after storage are sometimes recommended, but again this doesn't match up with a required 6 month change interval.

I've been averaging 7500 miles a year on my current car, meaning for 6 months I'd need 3750 mile intervals rather than the stated 5000. If I keep my current car and split my driving between cars this interval will be even less.

This interval might make sense if my low mileage was the result of short trips, but it's not. Most trips I make are 10 miles or more each way (l also make semi-regular 85 mile each way trips). 10 miles in my previous cars seems to be enough to fully warm up the oil.

Contrary to what some people think, short trips that don't warm up the oil fully actually are severe service, because water can build up in oil that never gets hot, and water+oil=sludge. I saw this the hard way years ago with one of my cars, a blown head gasket or cracked block dumped a lot of my coolant into the oil. After a couple of weeks of my 10 mile commute, the oil in the coolant boiled away or turned to sludge, bring the oil level back down and the oil then looked more like oil again. I also got to see real sludge... the top of the engine was filled with antifreeze-colored goo. The car was very old already at this point, and was not worth fixing so was junked soon after (leaving me with no more winter car ).

It seems I have to stick to Toyota's rules for at least 60 months/60,000 miles (powertrain warranty length), after this I might shift to a more sensible number taking into consideration that under many driving conditions 7,500 miles or maybe even more (with synthetic oil) might still be a perfectly safe interval.

I took a test drive in a Gen III recently, it actually drives quite similarly to the Fit which I also tried, complete with large A-pillar blind spots (I noticed them more in the Fit, because they almost blocked my view of an approaching car on a sharp curve, but I think the Prius view was similar), and very strange feel in the electric power steering compare with my current car (an old Prelude with 4 wheel steering!). I'm still thinking, and waiting for more inventory to show up.

 

Some do. I bought a jug of mobil1 0w-30 for our RX-400h at Wallmart and did the change this weekend. The jug had something like 4.7 quarts in it. Even after filling the filter, it was a perfect amount ... match made in heaven. Yep ... used up all my luck for this millennium

.

 

Correct, Unless the car is still sitting on the dealership lot. I've seen new vehicles, especially pickups and SUV's, sit up to a year.

In theory, that means the dealership should have changed the oil twice, as its every 6 months. Nope, they don't, apparently that's ok. But if it sits in your garage instead, ohhhhhhhh look out, you had better change the oil every 6 months

Correct

But if that new vehicle is instead sitting on a dealership lot for + 6 months, they will NOT change the oil. Apparently, there is some sort of magic force field around a dealership lot that prevents deterioation of oil

I could care less if you ran synthetic or regular, or if you changed the oil and filter daily. Coolant in oil = sludge.

Period

That's why I like used oil analysis. It will pick up problems, especially a *slow* coolant leak, long before you have an issue. Even trace amounts of coolant in oil will plug a filter, sending the filter into bypass and resulting in unfiltered oil circulating around your motor

 

Yep, UOAs are great. Run them every now and then to ensure that your oil change intervals are working for your driving habits/vehicle, then don't worry about it.

When was the last time you heard of an engine failing, anyway? It's basically unheard of unless your cooling system fails.

 

Will a scangauge give me data on the number of miles traveled with the ICE running? Even that is not perfect but I just can't justify changing the oil every 5000 total traveled miles on a hybrid.

 

I changed my oil last week with 5,000 miles on the odometer. Used Mobil 1 synthetic oil, 0 X 20 weight oil.

I will have to change mine only because of the warranty requirements which require every 5,000 miles an oil change.

If I had my way I would change every 10,000 miles.

alfon

 

Unfortunately I don't think a ICE running mileage from your scangauge satisfies the warranty.

I wonder if I should let the requirements slide a bit if I know I'm not likely doing any real harm, at least on the 6 months part, if it's due to not driving the car daily (sometimes I've left my cars sit for weeks or even a month or more due to vacations etc., or to keep my "good" car out of the winter road salt). I think I've done this with previous warranties actually, paying attention mainly to just the mileage part. Toyotas should be reliable, so as long as I don't neglect to the point of causing premature engine wear this doesn't seem that bad to me.

I just wish Toyota hadn't decided to change their policy apparently due to a lawsuit, making our requirements more frequent than other countries for the same car, or other cars here. I wish they would go with oil life sensors, or algorithms that consider driving habits like some other car makers, rather than a fixed mileage/calendar rule. After all they've done to maximize fuel efficiency, it doesn't make a lot of sense that they require so many oil changes (yes, it can be recycled, but that consumes energy for reprocessing versus getting the full useful life out of it).

This bugs me mainly because I'm sure most of my oil changes will be at much less than 5000 miles if I follow the 6 month rule, even though my low mileage is not due to short trips but due to keeping the car in my garage and not using it every day.

 

So does this mean that all 2010 Priuses are shipped with synthetic oil from the factory?

Also, how does one go about getting their oil analyzed? Thanks.

I'm ordering mine tomorrow! Guess what color.

 

I drive 37500 miles a year, I'm going to burn through the warranty soon enough and I'll just take the reasonable route after that. So does the SGII give that info? I'm assuming I also do the analysis on the oil to determine a more appropriate interval for changing the oil based on either miles or hours the ICE runs. Not perfect, but neither am I, so I have to keep it simple!

 

Blackstone Laboratories does it. There is a great forum that has an active forum just to discuss UOAs called BITOG. You can browse the forum for other people's Prius reports, for example. In general, they have been very good, especially when running on synthetic.

 

Well, that bugs me too. The Prius in the EU, running ACEA spec motor oil, has a minimum 12 month or 10,000 mile interval.

Mobil 1 0W-20 meets the bare minimum ACEA A1/B1 spec. With my 2004 Prius, running Mobil 1 0W-20 up to 12 months or 16,000 km, the used oil analysis came back fine

Some may suggest more frequent oil changes are better. Well, what if a very slow coolant leak would develop? You could change the oil and filter daily, and not prevent sludge

So thanks to substandard North American oil specs, Toyota faced and lost a sludge lawsuit. Based on the reports, I wonder if it was really gellation, not sludge? Doesn't matter

For a car that purports to be so environmentally correct, having among the shortest oil change intervals in the world is a contradiction

 

Thanks for the excellent information. Any suggestions as to where I can purchase the SST 09228-06501 - oil filter cap assembly "cap wrench" ??
thanks, Chuck