10K oil changes are BAD! ??

I did use a different manufacturer the 2nd time I had it apart.
I kinda blame the oil tho. There was a lot of build up behind the rings. I was using royal purple. Won't be using that again.

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The rings I use this time seems to be pretty good I don't use very much oil. Lawson oil I think is out of the chain tensionerary. I never could get that thing sealed up correctly it leaks.
I guess things are okay it's got about 60,000 miles on it.

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Maybe I'll get a scope to keep an eye on it. Sure right take off the wipers again aarrrrggg.

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This TSB is basically a block rebuild. It’s doing piston and ring replacement (with revised rings), but interesting read even for just replacing original rings with same. Plus lots of part nos.

 

Thought that premium cost of oils provided way more protection than oems?

 

I see a lot of disagreements but there is a LOT less 5k oil change oil burners. From what I've seen just going back to a 90s/00s oil change interval seems to help a lot. Manufacturers get environmental fees and now they have scheduled maintenance so they want to do as few as they can get away with and not have a lot of warranty claims to save the most money. BMW has done this forever, but Toyota was late to catch on since they had more to prove until now. The problem is the car manufacturer is more or less a project manager on the car and doesn't have a high profit margin on it overall since its a group effort to create the car between multiple suppliers and engineering companies. So that $500 difference in oil changes over the expected maintenance schedule of the car will add up to millions of dollars on multiple vehicles.
Also, straight highway miles aren't comparable to the normal driving mix that most people do that consist of lots of short trips around town with a lot of them not getting to operating temp before being shut off again or just doing a lot of slow moving and long idling trips. My average speed around town is 28mph, and average speed on an interstate trip is around 67mph so you can see engine hours would typically be higher on the standard user's 5k change. If you only did long extended highway trips you could extend oil change intervals but you would be the exception to the rule.

Also, the issue with the knock threshold is more than likely it is set at a point that doesn't recognize the egr clogging knock at mid load because it is below threshold. I notice it takes a ton of shit to get it to throw a check engine light. So maybe to avoid a ton of warranty work it was set a bit high. From their point of view it got the cars through the warranty period no problem so they succeeded.

EGR disabling wise it works. Can't argue with it. I have unplugged mine for around 25,000 miles now and it runs like a champ.
If any of you decide to try the "egr delete" method just unplug the electrical connector on the valve. Thats it. It will throw a p0403 and run an engine map that doesn't require EGR. Every time you unplug the 12v battery though you will need to plug the valve back in and then unplug it once more to get it functioning correctly again. I compared the system squeaky clean to unplugged and didn't see a mpg difference around town so i left it unplugged. But it does allow the throttle body to open more and it will allow the car to run around from 80-85% vs 70-75% calculated load. More than likely this will lead to a small boost in mpg at conditions above city driving and below interstate driving, but the annoyance of cleaning it doesn't pay off in my mind.
Doing any sort of weird mechanical modification will blow up the car if you try to "spoof" a working valve when it has in fact been disabled. This is because you will be telling the car it has a working valve when it doesn't. Not the same as the above as we are telling the car it has a disabled valve and will run as such. Much better than having an intake manifold that is halfway clogged and completely out of spec.

 

Wouldn't dare.

 

They are supposed to provide more protection under more extreme conditions. It’s unclear if they are better (performing) when it comes to normal use…

(One time I accidentally started the Prius forgetting to add oil during an oil change. It ran for a tiny bit until I realized why the little red oil light was on. Thank goodness no grinding sound before I turned it off. Mobil 1, either Annual Protection or Extended Performance, was drained out at the 1 year mark).

Ester based Redline still adds ZDDP to their 0W-20 (I just checked). So additive is still beneficial. I think it’s naturally multi-viscosity meaning less friction modifiers meaning longer lasting…..

 

Yikes! That's worse than what I did some years ago. I replaced a thermostat on an old car and stuffed a rag into the block to keep gasket chips from falling in, then forgot to remove the rag when I put in the new thermostat. Not sure what happened to clue me into that I screwed up, but when I took thinks apart again, the rag was stuck halfway through the thermostat. Luckily it didn't flow the other direction into the engine, water pump or radiator.

 

Excellent writeup, I share exactly the same opinion.

 

With all the computers that cars now have you'd think they would be able to keep track of miles traveled within a few categories of trip length. Or even more details by how many miles at what engine temp, etc.

Mike

 

I know that VAG cars do this if you set them to variable service interval and adjust correspondingly the service milleage.

 

NOPE.

Just change your oil at X miles intervals.
Regardless if it's a Prime and there are <100 miles on that expensive oil.
Don't question the tech toyota uses.

 

That's essentially the same "tech" used to define oil change intervals >75 years ago.

 

One of our company cars was a 2016 Chevy Tahoe and it had an hour meter. At like 175,000 miles its engine hours were around 5500 hours. So it was a slow mover as well. Must have been some sort of bare work model as I don't know if they all had hour meters, but it seems like an hour meter would be a good one to go on as well as mileage. I think they do the X mile or X months thing as a catch all for high engine hour slow movers.
The problem with using oem's engine oil life meters is how do you know what their main intention is with it and if their algorithm is any good? Is it for maximum life or the bare minimum to get to a set life they have deemed appropriate or is it slightly wrong? A lot of what ifs. Just leads you back to "you can make almost anything last longer if you take extra care with it."
I would just look back at what worked and pick something that worked. 5k is pretty easy. 3k and below gets to be annoying and possibly the car may not last long enough to realize the benefits.
But even the old vehicles with the older more robust piston rings had issues too. A lot of them had rod bearing or vvti solenoid issues with the long interval oil changes instead.

 

I knew a guy with a motorcycle (crotch rocket type) where he changed the oil every 1,000 miles…with Amsoil.

1. If your interval is 1,000 miles, spending for Amsoil is not just stupid…it’s insane.
2. He didn’t keep a bike for more than two years, so he might as well use canola oil.

 

4 months and 13037km (8087 miles) in and I have replaced the oil. I have not added any oil in this time. The oil was almost to the top mark and after 8087 miles it was still higher than. 1/3 above the minimum mark. And this is with the fact that I have a small oil seapage at the chain cover. As you can see the oil still had the golden reflection, so I would say the oil is just fine. After the oil change there was no different feel of the engine reving.
Car has now 103.000 miles (166.000 km). Oil was Mobil 1 ESP X2 0W-20. Car is mainly driven on the highway 30 miles one way (or longer distances) with moderate speed at 60mph. Practically no city driving, maybe 2% of the distance, 95% of driving is only the driver inside. So, for me the best possible conditions of use of the car to minimise the wear and tear of the engine and oil..
I will stay with the same oil change interval, maybe even raise it to 15.000km (9.300miles) for summer, when the oil should be even less stressed as now in the winter when the temperatures were around 0 Celsious and thus much more temperature range and water condensation. 15.000km is also the official oil change interval from Toyota here in Europe. Of course if the car is not used in hars conditions, than the interval must be shortened.

Another remark: when I bought the car and made an oil change at 153.000km it had Toyota oil inside with oil service done at Toyota dealer at 140.000km. The oil that went out was completelly trashed. It was a long time that I have seen so trashed oil. That oil did 2000km with the previous owner (only short driving) and 11.000km with me, so perfect routes for the oil.
I do not know what was the reason for the oil to be so trashed. I can list three reasons:
- those 2000km of short distances killed the oil
- the oil was not replaced at the dealer (only billed) because they new the owner will not do a lot of miles to the next service
- Mobil 1 ESP X2 oil is so much better than Toyota oil. Interestingly, I can get both oils for almost the same price

 

I switched to a maximum of 7k oil changes usually about 4k and I don't use any oil. I was using 1 quart 10k miles.

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By math guess you burned around 1/2qt to 2/3qt on that change. Start measuring the oil in and oil out to the ounce the best you can and you can see if oil consumption gets worse over time. Right now I would say thats about an average oil burn and that car will still have a good chance at becoming an oil burner at 150-200k. Try and clean the pcv valve as well soon if you haven't.

 

I replaced PCV valve at cca. 150.000km . I did that together with intake manifold cleaning.
Old PCV valve looked ok.