Will Toyota Dealer put in MY Mobil 1 at Oil Change?

I don't see why not and if they balk start looking for a new dealer for service and tell them that.

 

Frank's exactly right - I've done this at my dealer (which does carry Mobil 1, but they charge more than what I can get it for in the store). Bring your own, leave it in the car, and mention it to the guys at check-in.

-m.

 

mobil1 oil

Are synthetic oil recommended for the prius?

 

Hi Folks,

Just had my 5k service at Reno Toyota. I took in three qts of Mobil 1 and I explained that I would top off the oil. Total cost for the service came to $19.69, no problems and they simply reminded me not to forget to top of the oil when I got home. When I checked the oil last night it was right at the half-full spot on the dip stick.

In the past I have been critical of this dealer due to sales experiences and Lexus service problems. However, the Toyota service and parts folks could not have been nicer or more through!

Tom & Da Boyz

 

Toyota recommends regular 5W-30 dino oil, but permits the use of synthetic. Toyota also says that if you once use synthetic you must stick with synthetic. There is controversy over this, but this is what Toyota says.

I have seen no hard data or evidence for the oft-repeated claims that synthetic increases engine life or mpg. The design of the Prius engine and HSD is such that there is much less stress on the engine than there is in other cars. Synthetic oil is designed for use under extreme conditions, and the Prius engine does not experience extreme conditions.

I am not aware of any controlled study of the effect of synthetic on mpg. I would dearly love to have such information!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel\";p=\"37714)</div>

Daniel ---

Do you think I should use the regular oil instead of Mobil 1 with my Prius? - Mobil 1 is expensive.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(macreative\";p=\"40323)</div>

Daniel ---

Do you think I should use the regular oil instead of Mobil 1 with my Prius? - Mobil 1 is expensive.[/b][/quote]


There have been scientifically conducted fleet studies done which show that there are positive correlations between using synthetic oil and (insert benefit here). The difficulty has been finding them on the internet.

The only ones I could easily find are here:
http://www.royalpurple.com/techrp/summary.html

Here is what the Federal government thinks of synthetic lubes:
(Warning: its a PDF download)
http://www.epa.gov/smartway/documents/lowv...cositylubes.pdf

Generally speaking, as conditions get tougher, synthetic oil still holds up whereas regular dino oil could and will break down. what does that mean in reality? If you go very long distances between oil changes, synthetic will continue to protect your engine, where dino won't. There are also benefits in reduced drag (friction, viscocity, whatever you want to call it).

How long will synthetic go? See an informal study here:
http://neptune.spacebears.com/cars/stories/mobil1.html
http://neptune.spacebears.com/cars/stories...s/oil-life.html

That brings up the second big controversy (the first being how long can you go between changes) which is potentially voiding your engine warranty. The dealer cannot tell you that you can or cannot use a specific oil (as long as your oil meets the service grade ex,: SE, SF, SG, etc.) unless they supply that oil for free (this is a federal law) so what is at stake is the interval itself. If the engine fails, common thought has it that the dealer will blame your extended oil change interval for the failure, leaving you on the defensive. Now lets go one step further, how is the dealer to know that you actually went that long between intervals, especially if you don't tell them? Again common thought says that the dealer will pull an oil sample and the lab will reply by saying "oh my, this oil has not been changed in 9,300 miles, it must be the owner's fault". Try again, is what I think. If you look at the informal study (above) you'll see that there is no definite number of any test data that will state unequivocally how old any particular oil is at any given time and if you look at how well the synthetic oil holds up you actually can't tell anything at all. If you truly want to know how the engine is doing, then the optimum solution would be to sample every oil change (or more often) and look for a trend. A sudden rise in metals might indicate a bearing is failing, etc. Is the dealer going to do this, no.

Lets assume that you are like most people and fear a problem so you change the synthetic oil at the same interval as dino oil. What benefits will you then see? Its possible that yor MPG may rise a bit. I have seen increases of 3 to 10% in my own tests on my cars over the past 25 years. Scientific, hardly. Entertaining, you bet. The alleged imprivement in MPG is because synthetic tends to operate with reduced drag in your engine. Think it makes no difference, run 20W50 for six months then run 5W30 for six months, you'll see what I mean. This is an extreme example (I've done this so I know) but you will find MPG improvement and quicker starting in cold temeratures with the lighter oil. Switching to synthentic is a similar difference.

There are also arguments that synthetic oil will protect your engine if something bad happens (non-oil interval sort of thing). This is very hard to prove, and I've not seen any studies on it. I have see ads that purport that their synthetic elixer will protect your engine even if there is a total loss of oil. This claim has been around for years (that synthetic sticks better and will "coat" engine parts, so lets go back to the seventies when my friends and I started doing our own testing of sythetics (mostly to see if we could improve MPG and reduce foreign oil reliance).

While we were all sitting outside, talking about how we could make this a valid scientific test, one of our friends (who shall not be named so his children will not lose respect for him in his middle age) decided to drain all the oil out his engine and drive back and forth until the oil pressure light came on and he saw smoke or something. Keep in mind that I never claimed that any of us were geniouses, or even sane, but let us just chalk it up to being young and stupid So young and stupid (we'll just call him Yas) is driving up and down this gigantic but otherwise empty parking lot yelling out his window, "look, it's still running"! Question: What is almost as stupid as Yas attempting to melt his engine down? Answer: Me, ruinning after a car I can't possibly catch yelling at the top of my already depleted lungs, "shut it down, you're going to melt it down"! The obvious answer from him, "look, it's still running"! He got bored after 15 minutes of racing back and forth. That engine never failed. The oil he used before and after? Quaker State (non-synthetic).

The moral of that story? pulling the drain plug and driving around without oil doesn't prove a thing. Will driving around with no oil mess your engine up? Yup, it sure will. Does it always? Apparently not. I have seen someone melt down an engine with no oil in just minutes (botched oil change on a Mazda). Go figure.

A simple advantage of synthtetic oil with an extremely long change interval is that you are wasting less of our precious natural resources, and could potentially save money on oil changes, not to mention polluting less when you get rid of the old oil and filter.

Another reason you might hear about is that synthetic oil is not made from petroleum oil so you help reduce our dependence on foreign oil. I this true? Only if the oil is a fully PAO synthetic, like Mobil 1, Redline, Royal Purple, etc. There are synthetic blends out there that function like full synthetics but are made from foreign oil (Castrol, Mobil, etc.). They are less expensive but this is not exactly what we are looking for.

The bottom line is that synthetics can help but its not a huge difference if you stick to the factory recommended oil change intervals. Do I use synthetics, yes. Do I stretch out the change interval? Not until the warranty is over. Do I sleep better at night? Sure I do. Synthetic is like insurance to me. I might never need it but I like to know its in there, just in case. Do I save on gas? Yes, typically 3% or more. Now that I have a Prius I have to see how it works out since the engine is not always running, but it starts so many more times than a regular engine, I wonder if we could help it a bit more with synthetics (yes, I know all about the start sequence of a Prius engine, I'm impressed, but I still want to protect the engine).

Since the Prius is really an assemblage of many small improvements rather than one huge advantage, adding another small improvement keeps it in character for me. YMMV.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Brian\";p=\"40542)</div>

I can't believe that he said that synthetic was bad for hybrids. Makes me wonder if he is just ignorant or maliciously trying to sucker you to buy his stuff. Glad you showed him! Well done.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Brian\";p=\"40583)</div>

Isn't your neighbor one of the managers at the dealership?

It may be a time to have a chat with him.