break in and first oil change

Pretty sure no matter what you do, these engines are going to last a long long LONG time. These are pretty much fleet vehicles. Very robust. Just follow whatever the manual says. These aren't high performance BMW or Porsche engines. I plan to take mine in at 5,000 miles or 6 mos as instructed by my dealer. Then just change at 10k intervals after that.

 

So he's suggesting a first oil change at that distance/time? Sounds good.

Just for giggles I took new vs old oil pics: this is after 6 months, and 4876 km's.

New:



Old:

 

^Cool. While old/overused oil will be black or darker than new oil, it's a common misconception that dark colored oil is bad. It's not necessarily so. Dark/black oil means its working pulling particulates out of suspension. Basically oil turns dark when it's doing a good job =)

 

Yeah, understand that. But 4876 km equates to roughly 3,000 miles. Makes 10,000 miles seem a long stretch.

It probably is fine, but I'm just old school. I question Toyota's wisdom on this though:

south of the 49th parallel: 10,000 miles or 12 months
north of the 49th parallel: 5,000 miles or 6 months (8,000 km)
Alaska: 10,000 miles or 12 months

Let's just say it's debatable, lol.

 

They (over)simplify all their recommendations as much as possible to keep things as simple as possible, so we naive customers don't hurt our small brains contemplating technical details. Thus, the same flavor oil, for the same change interval, all over the US, all year, whether you're in Phoenix in July or in Fairbanks in January. Since Canadian conditions are considered more severe on average, ALL of Canada gets an equal shorter change interval, in a similar simplification. If that causes a few cars in the milder bits of Canada to receive more frequent changes than needed, nobody's hurt much.