2006 w 128k miles: Change to Synthetic Oil? NOT Losing Oil Now

Synthetic oil being cleaner than regular oil after only 1K miles is perhaps the most notable difference I've experienced. Also being able to go 8K miles or more is a big help due to me going on a 1500-2000 mile road trip every other month. And maybe 0W-20 has a very slight MPG improvement...

 

Any oil turns black, fast; that’s a detergent oil doing it’s job. I’ve taken pics, a spaghetti sauce jar with Toyota 0W20 (synth) drained after maybe 2-3k kms, and it’s black as ink. Don’t kid yourself that synth is some panacea.

 

What? Pandemic driving for 6 months?

 

That could even be normal miles for him.

But COVID didn't help the garage queen stretch her legs very often.

Maybe soon.

 

put a bore scope down into the valve cover and look.
put the same bore scope up through the drain hole and look.

if you have a ton of sludge it will take a while to filter and clean it out just by doing oil changes. there are products that will make the sludge become dilute in the oil again, but you'll have to follow their instructions to get all the sludge out of the engine.

after that, yes, you will have clear/honey looking oil for a few thousand miles with full synthetic, if you don't have a bunch of blow by/bad rings.

you can also use atf/acetone to try and unstick rings, that will raise compression/efficiency and make the oil stay clean longer.

1 depends on how much gunk you have
2 there are a million opinions on this. mine is: user whatever oil brand you like and change it every 3-5k miles.