When to do 1st oil change?

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Why didn't Toyota put an electronic gauge on the dash showing total revolutions of the ICE since the last oil change. By doing so, the oil change interval would make more sense.
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I don't think the number of revs would be a true measure of when to change the oil.

Lots of short trips and/or stop and go driving would result in the need for an oil change much sooner than long trips on the interstate even though there would be lots more revs in the latter case.

Further, I'm sure the added cost of such a device, which I think BMW has, would more than outweigh its' benefit, at least for me.

MARK: Asking the service people to suggest when to change the oil is like letting the fox guard the hen house. The dealer where I bought my car suggested a 3000 mile interval. Do you hear the cash register ringing? :lol: ? ? ?

 

As far as an oil life monitor, most GM brand cars and trucks have one. It doesn't appear to add too much to the cost of the vehicle.

The Driver Information Display on my parents LeSabre can be scrolled to display the percentage of oil life remaining, under current operating conditions. On a few summer highway trips to Vancouver BC it let us put on almost 12,000km before it suggested an oil change.

OTOH in city driving, especially in winter, it has suggested an oil change with only 2,700km on the oil. With the Buick, the dealer suggested waiting 5,000km before the first oil change, then twice a year or whenever the display told us to change. Also no synthetics until at least 20,000km.

WIth my 2000 GMC Sierra, I couldn't access the percentage of oil life remaining. I think that feature was introduced in 2002 or 2003 pickups. It would instead display CHANGE ENGINE OIL in large amber letters.

With highway driving only, it let me go up to 9,000km a couple of times. City driving in winter, it once turned on at 2,200km. The same dealer as for the Buick told me to change the oil in my truck at 2,500km, and synthetics were ok after 5,000km.

For some reason - probably poor design - the GM Vortec truck motors burn a lot of oil. I was lucky enough to get 8,000km per litre of oil, but I used a good synthetic and carefully followed the dealer recommendations. GM sent out TSB's that claimed 1 litre per 1,600km was "normal."

Supposedly, the GM oil life monitor system keeps track of engine cycles and temps, and is "calibrated" to the engine oil recommended, eg regular 5W-30. It's highly variable, turning on much sooner with city driving. There is no reason why Toyota can't use a similar system.

As far as the first oil change, for the most part I've gone to waiting until the first scheduled oil change, unless the dealer tells me otherwise and also puts it in writing. Modern engines are manufactured far differently, from different materials, than old engines or those made the "old fashioned" way.

In particular, the automated honing process used on cylinder walls uses complex multiple angles with CNC equipment. They usually bolt deck plates to the head first, to simulate the block stress of a cylinder head actually torqued to factory spec. Otherwise you won't hone the cylinders perfectly level.

Piston rings are different too. Old steel/chrome rings have mostly been replaced by coated rings, such as Moly rings. Or if you have a custom motor built at a good machine shop, and they use ZGTF rings, there is a different break-in procedure.

One thing that nobody has really provided a good answer to: why do cars in Europe, running the same motors we have here, have usually double the oil change interval? For example, only once a year or every 16,000km.

True the manufacturer in Europe is allowed to specify exactly what oil to run, such as a semi-synthetic or full synthetic. But we have several generations of drivers here raised on this "every 3 months 3,000 miles" garbage.

Otherwise you'd hear of motors over in Europe blowing up every 20,000 miles or some such nonsense. Yet motors in Europe last as least as long, probably longer, than motors here. Is that all explained just by running a semi-synthetic or synthetic oil? Or is something else going on here?

 

The guys doing the sythetic oil life study are using a GM automobile with the oil life monitor. Its interesting to see what the monitor says vs. what the lab that is testing the used oil says. I am hoping that we get some useful information from their experience.

http://neptune.spacebears.com/cars/stories...s/oil-life.html

 

Jayman, I have repeadedly asked the same question you did about european change intervals. Yes, it may be true that their oil is of greater quality than ours, but that still doesn't explain contamination. You are still putting the same junk in at the same rate, which is what Consumers reports determined. They did indeed determine that the synth oil itself held up to breakdown, but still the contamination was there from blowby and what not.

 

Dan:

After doing a bit of research on this back in the 80's, I concluded the 3,000 mile/3 month oil change myth was just that, a *myth*

There are few operating environments where you really would *have* to change the oil so soon. Even the API "Starburst" garbage used here should be good for 6 months/5,000 miles.

When you consider how long ago the European market cars went to extended oil drains, by now we would have heard of disastrous failures if the extended oil drains were truly bad. No reports that I've come across, and the new ACEA specs call for *much* extended oil drains.

I imagine if Toyota in Europe suddenly claimed their Prius car "needed" an oil change interval of 6 months or 8,000km, they'd be the laughing stock of Europe. Since the Prius in Europe appears to live just fine with a 1 year or 16,000km interval, something else must be up.

A lot of the 3 month / 3,000 mile myth was pushed by the API and its member companies, such as Conoco, Exxon, Mobil, Quaker State, Valvoline, etc. The oil change business is a *big* business and a great profit engine for dealerships and especially all those Qwik Lube places.

I know that the API specs are mostly garbage, but even with a borderline API oil, where did they derive the "science" to back up their claims that you needed to change the oil every 2,000 miles? Now it's every 3,000 miles but so what? A manufacturer "pushes" it to 5,000 miles. Again, where is their research to *prove* you have to change the oil that often?

Since a lot of us were raised on this propaganda and outright lies of such short oil change intervals, we even invent these stories when we hear of folks only changing the oil when UOA tells them to. "But the motor will blow up! It's not right, the Oil Companies say so!"

Yet 100,000 miles later and the motor is in perfect condition, the same folks who predicted the motor was supposed to blow up 90,000 miles ago have suddenly become silent and refuse to engage in further discussion. Another case of Paradigm Shock?

I don't think anybody gives serious consideration to the environmental impact of all those oil changes. At one time a lot of that used oil was just dumped somewhere. Even now with the regulations being somewhat enforced, what about all those oil filters?

Even after you stick the oil filter in a crusher to squeeze out a bit more oil, the media is still saturated. At one time they were tossed in the dump to leak oil. Now they're supposed to be collected and treated as hazardous waste.

I think the issue of engine "contamination" is also overblown. If you really wanted to keep all the contaminants out of the motor, you'd have to change the oil and filter after one loop around the block. In a motor in otherwise good condition, at what point does the oil change interval become absurd? Every 1,000 miles? Every 2,000 miles?

At what point does the oil change interval become too long? 10,000 miles? 30,000 miles? Without used oil analysis you really can't be sure. One thing that is proven is that if you put on a Bypass filter in addition to the main filter, you only have to change the oil when UOA tells you to do so. In some cases you can then go 100,000 miles before an oil change.

Engine assembly techniques and materials have come a long way in 30 years, which has the motor very tight and contributing a very low level of contamination. So have new innovations in additives and oils, especially synthetic oils, that contain far more detergents than they used to.

Look at the VW cars in Europe that can go 2 years or up to 50,000km (Diesel motor) before an oil change. First Castrol then Esso developed Extended Life oils for that duty, and there is talk of being able to double that change interval.

At one time, folks even used to change the oil in Old Bessy every 2,000 miles, and were really excited if they got the odometer to roll around. There was a good reason the odometer only had 5 digits. Now we treat it as a common occurence when a motor can go at least 100,000 miles, and the odometers have 6 digits.

So in the end I'm not so much surprised that the Prius in Europe has a 1 year or 16,000km oil change. I'm really surprised that the same car, with the same motor, here in North America has only a 6 month or 8,000km oil change.

The few people who have gone through the expense of used oil analysis have proven that the 1.5 litre motor used in our Prius have *very* low wear rates and are "easy" on oil. So I'm mystified why the oil change is so short for the Prius here.

This debate is just as circular as the one about which viscosity to run in the motor. Do you run 5W-30? 10W-30? 0W-30? How about a straight SAE 30? They're all close to the same viscosity at operating temp. How about 0W-40? Maybe 15W-50??

One thing I thought the CR Taxi Fleet Test proved was that even a no-name oil was good for at least 6,000 miles of grueling taxi service.

Jay

 

I think you hit on it in paragraph 5. Most people don't realize the extent of the influence of business and money over media, research, and government. Remember leaded gas?

 

Yep I remember leaded gas. Ethyl Corp had everybody convinced it was "good" for the motor or the motor would blow up or some other bulls***.

IMHO Ethyl Corp pulled the same stunts that the big tobacco companies pulled: "It's good for you ... it doesn't really hurt you ... ok maybe it might hurt just very young kids ... ok it's bad but it's your fault for using it ... we just set up an offshore company without extradition treaties so go ahead and sue us you ..."

If everybody moved to extended oil changes - where driving conditions warrant - I imagine a lot of those Qwik Lube places would go under. They need you in there every 3 months to pay the bills and line their pockets.

Up here, due to the extreme weather conditions (-40 in winter, +85 F in summer) you probably couldn't go more than 6 months anyway. Even if you drive on the highway, at -40 there will be a lot of condensation in the oil.

One neat thing about synthetic oils at very cold temps and high condensation levels: they don't appear to make any sludge, and they don't thicken much.

A relatively fresh conventional 5W-30 will quickly make sludge at cold temps in the presence of moisture, then it will develop all the viscosity characteristics of a brick.

Again, getting back to topic, I would absolutely wait 8,000km / 5,000mi before changing the oil the first time, to ensure proper break-in.

 

Actually the scam was unleaded gas. Lead was legitimately used as a valve seat lubricant. As engines became more efficient, compression ratios and thus temperatures steadily rose. At some point during this growth, you really could burn a valve without tetraethyl lead or something else in there to protect the valve seats.

The big scam came when it was time to take the lead out of the gas because of massive air pollution. All gasoline car engines by now had been upgraded to hardened valve seats which did not require the protection that lead offered so it was safe to go unleaded so you could use a catalytic converter without clogging it with lead.

What did the oil companies do? They charged us more for unleaded gas, which was reagular gas that they didn't have to add the additional lead into. :cussing: I know that they had to change their workflow to accomplish this, but it just doesn't seem right.

The recent fooling around with MTBE is the same story, so I won't go on about that one.

The only thing we need to protect outselves against is the threat of loss of warranty (real or perceived). Since all modern synthoil meets the manufacturers requirements (SF/SG, or whatever the latest rating is), then we only need to figure out how long an interval we want to change it at after the first change. If we decide to go longer than the manufacturer recommended period by a large amount, then the worry would be that they could fight you in a warranty dispute in case of engine failure. How many Toyota engines now have massive failure (if they were properly looked after)? I would say none.

 

The biggest scam wrt engine life was the carburettor. Carbs are notoriously inefficient and never can make more than gross fuel/air adjustments.

Inevitably, the resulting mixture was too rich and the excess fuel caused cylinder wash. Unless you were really careful with what type of oil you used, and how often you changed it, fuel dilution was a real problem.

IMHO the two best things ever to increase the life of a motor were: fuel injection and better materials.

Fuel injection can very precisely control the amount of fuel/air mixture due to the O2 sensor. This is "feedback" as the O2 sensor is used to adjust the basic fuel/air map to fine-tune the map. Even on an older V8 with only one O2 sensor, the mixture is many times more precise than a carb.

Modern V8's that have the motor isolated into two banks- each with their own O2 sensor for feedback - are many times more precise again. If they could get the manufacturing costs down, per-cylinder control of fuel and spark would be the ultimate. Some BMW cars already treat their 6 cylinder gas motors as two banks of 3 cylinders, each with its own O2 sensor.

Automated assembly techniques are way better than hand assembly. In the "good 'ole days" a guy would hand-grind a cylinder or a valve seat. That was really imprecise and also left behind a lot of shavings or "swarf" that they didn't care about cleaning out.

Now, you can program a CNC (Computerized Numerically Controlled) machine like a grinder to make the same exact hone pattern on every motor. The deck plate, first used to precisely build race car motors, is now used to ensure the block is honed to match the stresses with the head torqued down.

Every motor is absolutely spotless as it is repeatedly tanked and cleaned after every machining step. You would really bugger up a close-tolerance motor by leaving swarf behind.

New piston rings, such as gapless rings, and coated rings (Moly and other friction reducers), dramatically extend the life of cylinder bores while reducing friction. New low-expansion pistons, such as hypereutectic pistons, with coated skirts are used to ensure a very tight bore fit and again reduce emissions and friction.

That very tight bore fit combined with gapless rings, means the blowby and contamination is very minimal. So in theory the motor has less trash in the oil than it used to.

Lead was used more as an anti-knock additive than as a lubricant for valve stems. Unleaded costs more as the extra refining and substitute anti-knock additives are more expensive.

Actually, high levels of lead result in a deposit formation on the valve stems and piston crown land. This can cause increased wear and can even cause valves to stick as the lead deposits form in the seat. Also the lead deposits could cause rings to stick.

In the 1970's, an Uncle of mine had a small farm and a collection of B&S engines to run grain augers, hay bale chain drives, and whatnot. At least every 2 years he had to take the cylinder head off the B&S motor to scrape the lead deposits off. That was easy to do as the B&S motor is valve-in-head.

Since motors are way better than they used to be, motor oils have to be different too. Back when every motor had camshafts and flat tappets, you had to control the scuffing from all that sliding friction (The lifter bucket "sliding" along the cam lobe). Just about every motor now is either roller lifter or OHC.

Traditional techniques to control friction, such as adding moly, can contaminate O2 sensors and catalytic converters. So you need different additive packages to control friction and oil breakdown (Acid).

So with all of that, it's really odd that Toyota recommends 8,000km in North America and 16,000km in Europe. Unless you have to deal with temps colder than -20 F on a regular basis, might as well run a basic 5W-30. You have to change it every 6 months or 5,000 miles anyway.

 

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How many Toyota engines now have massive failure (if they were properly looked after)? I would say none.
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Don't forget the oil sludging problem that has plagued Toyota engines the last few years. I haven't heard anything about it recently, but I do rember that Toyota blamed it on lack of timely oil changes while others blamed it on faulty engine design. I think the latter was actually the problem but I don't remember Toyota ever officially accepting that explanation.

I'm not sure this is even pertinent to the discussion, but your statement that I quoted above immediately brought it to mind.

 

popoff, I believe the explanation has become "faulty engine design"

I hear about hubby's coworkers replacing engine heads in (I think) Corollas on a regular basis. It's covered under warranty so it's really a gravy job for the tech that gets it.

 

That really became headlines in the Sienna, didn't it?

If I recall, the oil drainback channels in the heads allowed the oil to coke laying around in the cylinder head. A basic API "Starburst" 5W-30 has little protection from such an event and once the basic additive package is used up, you can expect heavy coking/sludging.

Remember that API specs assign a "pass" grade to an oil if 25% of it boils off, and it thickens "only" 250% in service. And that's for a 60 hour test, not the 250 hour ACEA test run in Europe. :roll:

I had completely forgotten about the sludging motor issue. Looks like Toyota is in CYA Mode. Since the Prius in Europe run either a semi-synthetic or a full synthetic, that isn't an issue.

 

In addition to being a valve seat lubricant, lead was the cheapest octane booster available. Raising the octane numbers to the market standard without the use of lead costs more than the savings achieved by removing the lead from the end product.

 

Two things:

1. A DVD on the Prius that was given me by a dealership explained that
the prius uses a new pink engine oil specifically designed for the car. This DVD seemed geared toward the Toyota mechanic and not the general public, so I did not take it as a way of convincing the viewer to make all oil changes at the dealer.
2. The dealer says that oil changes cost $75.00, and I am assuming that this new oil can only be obtained if I do my oil changes at the dealership.


I wonder what other members think of this. Has anyone else heard about this pink oil? Is this just a ploy to get the owner into the dealership where they charge 3x as much for an oil change elsewhere? How can one know for certain with such a technologically advanced vehicle?

Thanks,

MW

 

IMHO, the 4 cylinder gas engine in the Prius is one of the least technologically advanced components of the car.

Depending on your preference, I would maintain that any high quality dino oil or synthetic would be perfectly adequate for the Prius.

 

But what about the poor folk who were out of warranty?

I think I remember reading that Toyota never owned the problem and the individual owner out of warranty had to fight to get them to cover the repair.

 

How many Toyota engines now have massive failure (if they were properly looked after)? I would say none.
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Don't forget the oil sludging problem that has plagued Toyota engines the last few years. ... but your statement that I quoted above immediately brought it to mind.[/quote]

I totally forgot about the sludging problem (it only occured to a few people in two engines, the 1MZ V-6 and the 5SFE inline 4). The issue is that no one has proven that Toyota was unequivically at fault with that one, however Toyota did take care of car engines that failed if the owener can prove that they did at least one oil change per year.

This totally illustrates the point I was making, if you do something radical like go to an extended oil change interval and there is a big problem, you could get challenged by the manufacturer. In fact, these owners were challenged, with Toyota finally requiring them to show that they performed at least one oil change per year to get warranty replacement of the engines.

The other side of that situation is that there were only two engines that experienced this symptom, which leads the engineer in me to guess that there was a marginal design issue that was not caught before production. Regardless of who was at fault, Toyota reported that the failure rate was infinitesimal.

It would be great if we could run our own synthoil experiment with the Prius. What we would do is exactly the same thing the guys doing the synthetic oil life study are doing, have many of us contribute a few bucks towards having oil samples tested at certain intervals. The results, along with the lab's opinion would be posted for all to see. We would need at least two volunteers, one to run dino and one to run synthetic. We could even run a third test with someone switching early to synth (at maybe 1,000/2,000 miles). It would be interesting to track the long term results. This would all be done for fun, as having so few cars and no way to control the test conditions would make this more of an informal test compared to a scientific test, but it would be amusing.

http://consumeraffairs.com/news02/toyota_sludge.html

http://neptune.spacebears.com/cars/stories...s/oil-life.html

 

that's the power inverter coolant. it is changed much less frequently than engine oil.

And regarding the engine oil sludging issue:

97-01 Camrys, Siennas, and Avalons are expected to have this crop up... those engines are covered to 100K miles against this situation.

 

Nope never heard of it. The oil on the stick looks like any other mass-market oil. My local Toyota dealer charges me exactly the same as everybody else for an oil change.

When you consider how small the sump is, I'm a bit peeved about that. He should charge a bit less for owners of Prius, Echo Sedan, and Echo Hatchback.

The only motor oil I've seen with a consistently different color is the Castrol 0W-30, which you can find at Wally World or Canadian Tire here. It says "Made In Germany" on the back of the bottle and meets an impressive list of European vehicle standards.

That Castrol 0W-30 oil is green and smells like Gummi Bears. A guy I know uses it in his Chevy Cavalier and swears by it. The bright green color took me by surprise.