Thank you for contacting Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc.
We appreciate your inquiry regarding the us of synthetic oil in your 4Runner.

All Toyota vehicles come from the factory with natural petroleum-based engine oil. Toyota is currently recommending American Petroleum Institute (API) grade SJ petroleum-based engine oil. In moderate climates, this oil should have a Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) viscosity rating of 5W-30. In our high mileage tests with preventative maintenance performed at the recommended intervals, the recommended natural petroleum-based oil has provided excellent service.

If you decide to use synthetic oil for the engine, it would be best not to switch until the first scheduled oil change. Synthetic oil should meet or exceed the above specifications. Even if synthetic oil is used, we do not recommend a longer oil change interval. Also, once synthetic oil is used, you should keep using it and not switch back and forth with natural petroleum-based oil.

If the engine oil that you use, whether natural or synthetic, does not meet the above specifications or is defective, any resulting damage to the engine will not be covered by the Toyota New Vehicle Limited Warranty. You can protect yourself against this possibility by having your maintenance services performed by a factory-authorized Toyota dealer.

The Scheduled Maintenance Guide cites the minimum recommended services under what is assumed to be a standard, or typical set of driving conditions. In terms of maintaining the integrity of your warranty, our recommendation is adherence to the Scheduled Maintenance guide, which recommends service intervals of every 5000 miles, or 6 months, whichever comes first.

According to our records, the 4Runner we have on file for your is V8 4.7 4WD . The oil capacity for that engine, with a filter, is 6.5 quarts.

Your email has been documented at our National Headquarters under file #200412021090. If we can be of further assistance, please feel free to contact us.

National Customer Relations

If you're doing the same change intervals, I don't see any advantage to synthetic, do you? Okay, if you're constantly revving in the 5000 range, then maybe but under normal driving conditions and with 8000km. oil changes, what's the point?

If you are planning on keeping the vehicle for a long time, it can't hurt and will likely help you achieve 300,000+ miles. If you want to trade it after the warranty expires, don't bother. Although if you do put synthetic in, you can always advertise that fact as a selling point. Might edge a buyer toward your truck.

If you use the recommended (by Toyota) oil and change every 5K miles your V8 will not have a lubrication failure. I am going to change to synthetic, because why not. If I am going to go to the trouble to change it myself, might as well buy the Mobil 1 5w30 while I'm getting the oil. If I was going to continue to use the dealer, I would continue to change it every 3750 miles and use the Castrol GTX 5w30 that the dealer pushes. My dealer charges $30 for the service, and then I have to spend another $1 to wash all of the spilled oil off the bottom of the engine.

Uh oh, they have a file on you now! Call Mulder and Scully.

I'm coming up on my first oil change, and plan to switch to Mobil1. I have used synthetic in all my cars, because I do my own changes, and I am slightly anal about them. (vast understatement, according to my wife)

I like the slight extra measure of safety it gives me, especially on my wife's truck, since she seldom reminds me when she has passed the mileage interval and usually goes over 5000 between changes. I used it exclusively on my Camry, which was one of the vehicles involved in the recall for engine sludging, and when they checked it, it didn't need the cleaning, and they said it was one of the cleanest they'd seen with 80,000 miles on the clock. I believe it was due to Mobil1 having a greater amount of detergent additives than most other oils, and synthetic's greater ability to withstand breakdown.

Mike

Does our 4.7V8 really hold 6.5 qt's of oil??? How much is a qt of Mobil 1 5w30? The Toyota oil filter costs around $5??? at the dealer? Just trying to figure out what a do it yourself oil/filter change will run on the V8 4runner.

skategoat - synthetic oil offers a few benefits over dino oil.

- doesn't and become acidic like dino oil does.
- doesn't break down nearly as fast as dino oil does, in terms of being able to provide lubrication at high temps and pressures
- reduced engine wear, better gas mileage, based on synthetic oils better lubrication capabilities. Synthetic has a lower coef. of friction, or shear, than dino oil does, which allows two mating parts that slide or rotate together to do so with less friction. More friction = more heat, more wear, more resistance, less MPG, etc.

Forgot about better gas mileage. I've consistantly seen this in all the cars that I've switched to synthetic.

My Toyota dealer used to charge me for 8 quarts of oil even though it's supposed to max out at 6.5. And they wonder why I don't use them anymore.

I find it interesting that they said that if you start using synthetic oils, don't go back to naturals.

Why?

It's like mixing water and oil...just don't do it.

Synthetic and regular oil will blend together fine. It's got to be for another reason like gasket swelling or something.

And what do you base that on?

I've heard of people who regularly mix conventional and synthetic oils and have had no problems

I've yet to see one synthetic oil manufacturer that recommends flushing your engine before switching to synthetic oil. You can't drain 100% of the oil out of your engine, so some mixing is inevitable when you switch.

Look on any Mobil1 bottle, it says right on the label "Compatible with conventional oils."

Amsoil's website-
AMSOIL Synthetic Blend 10W-40 Motor Oil is compatible with conventional petroleum and other synthetic lubricants; however, mixing AMSOIL Synthetic Blend 10W-40 with a conventional oil will shorten the extended drain period of AMSOIL Synthetic Blend 10W-40


Shell's website-
Synthetic Shell Oils CAN be Safely Mixed With
Non-synthetic Products.
Shell's Staff Research Engineer Stephen Miller says he is at a loss to explain the growth of a myth which suggests that synthetic and regular motor oils can't be safely mixed.
"All grades of Shell oils, synthetic and conventional, can be mixed with no compatibility issues," he says.
Shell has also tested compatibility of products with our four major motor oil competitors. While we can't always be sure of what changes they may be making to their formulations, we currently are not aware of any compatibility issues.


As for the seal swelling comment, that's just a guess. It could have to do with wear properties or something else, I really don't know. What I do know is that synthetic oil can co-exist with conventional oil quite happily in your crankcase...

I have always been under the impression that you can mix the synthetic and the dino oil together just fine, and you can also go synthetic and go back to a "synthetic mix". The manufacturers make the synthetic mixes constantly for a slightly cheaper price.

However, once you go full synthetic, or synthetic mix you can not go back to a non synthetic oil by itself. You will imediately notice a little blowby which eventually will lead to your car smoking/shorting the life of the engine. The synthetic is best described as a fine, fine lubrication which penetrates the cylinder walls and rings, etc that provides unsurpassed lubrication. However if you ever take that superior lubrication away, it will cause voids and pits in your cylinder walls and rings.

Synthetic is better in almost every way, the reason I say almost is the price. I personally am making the switch in my Runner next oil change, I will be at teh 10000 mile mark and am confident that the runner was properly broken in, I will move my oil changes up to 5000-7500 mile mark as opposed to the 3000-5000 marks so it is actually worth it, a little.

As for milage I have always noticed a postitive increase, usually only 10 or 20 mile total per tank. Nothing to write home to mom about though. I've always noticed a difference in pep though, which is simply amazing from just changing an oil.

I've been impressed since the first time I've used it, and you got to think anything that is good enough for a car that runs 24 hours at 10-12,000 rpms is good enough for my car. Synthetics originated in Formula One racing and other racing fields alike.

Its good stuff, to me though there's really only two brands of synthetic though, Mobil 1, and Castrol Syntec.

Hope I helped.

T

Let me say I am a fan of Castrol GTX oil and when I went to synthetic oil I first thought of Castrol. After reading this article, I decided not to go with Castrol Syntec. Tell me what you think.

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Synthetic motor oil gets all new semantics. BY PATRICK BEDARD November 2000 Now that the meaning of "is" has gotten so slippery you need to grab it with both hands, we'd better keep an eye on longer words, too. One's already gone squirmy on us -- "synthetic," as in synthetic motor oil. Most guys know two things about synthetic oils. First, the price is three to four times that of conventional oils. Second, they're not real oil, not made from crude. News flash: Scratch that second part. Now motor oils derived from crude may be labeled "synthetic." But they still cost over four bucks a quart. Bait and switch? That's the obvious conclusion. Except in this case the advertising ethics people have given their approval. Here's what happened, according to a detailed account published in the trade magazine Lubricants World. Late in 1997, Castrol changed the formula of its Syntec "full synthetic motor oil," eliminating the polyalphaolefin (PAO) base stock (that's the "synthetic" part, which makes up about 70 percent by volume of what's in the bottle) and replacing it with a "hydroisomerized" petroleum base stock. Mobil Oil Corporation, maker of Mobil 1, "World's Leading Synthetic Motor Oil," said no fair and took its complaint to the National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus. NAD often arbitrates between feuding advertisers on their conflicting claims. The notion behind synthetic motor oils as we've known them is an elegant one. Instead of relying on the cocktail of hydrocarbons contained in crude oil, why not go into the laboratory and build the perfect base stock from scratch, molecule by molecule? The synthesizing of PAO starts with ethylene gas, a simple two-carbon molecule, and builds till it gets 10-carbon molecules, then combines three of those to form PAO. The result is a fluid more stable than the usual base oils derived from crude. It keeps flowing at low temperatures. It's more resistant to boiling off, and more resistant to oxidation, which causes thickening with prolonged exposure to high temperatures. Still, there's more than one road to the point B of improved stability. Petroleum refiners in recent years have learned how to break apart certain undesirable molecules -- wax, for example, which causes thickening at low temperatures -- and transform them by chemical reaction into helpful molecules. These new hydroisomerized base oils, in the view of some industry participants, "provided properties similar to PAOs but cost only half as much," Lubricants World reported. The argument before NAD tiptoed around the obvious -- does the consumer get four bucks' worth of value from each quart of synthetic oil? -- and plunged straight into deep semantics. Mobil's experts said "synthetic" traditionally meant big molecules built up from small ones. Castrol's side held out for a looser description, defining "synthetic" as "the product of an intended chemical reaction." What do unbiased sources say? It turns out that the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) and the American Petroleum Institute (API) both have technical standards covering motor oils, and both of these organizations in the '90s backed away from their old definitions of "synthetic," leaving lots of room for new interpretations. In the end, NAD decided that the evidence "constitutes a reasonable basis for the claim that Castrol Syntec, as currently formulated, is a synthetic motor oil," said Lubricants World. The obvious question now: Has the term "synthetic motor oil" been opened up to the point that it no longer means anything? Maybe. But here's a better question: Did synthetic ever mean what we thought it meant? "Great oil" is what most guys think it means. "At that price, it's gotta be great stuff!" Okay, but how great? Your car's manual tells what motor oil you should use, and with few exceptions, that description will consist of only two specifications. One is for viscosity, such as 10W-30; and another is for the API service grade, SJ being the current one for gasoline passenger cars. The buck-a-quart multigrades meet these standards, as do the synthetics. The synthetics, on the back label, claim compliance with more standards, but even if you know what they mean, they seem beside the point for U.S. passenger cars. For example, should you care about diesels if you drive a gasoline burner? API service CF is the oldest of the current specs for light-duty diesels; some synthetics list that one. Synthetics may also list ACEA A1 and B1, which are European specs roughly equivalent to API gasoline and diesel specs. The Europeans grade their oils by levels of performance, so that A2 and A3 are tougher specs than A1. Same for diesels. Usually, the date of the spec is omitted, but A1-98 is newer than A1-96. Completely absent is the one performance claim that would have real meaning for all of us -- some indication of longer oil life. But automakers hold synthetics to the same change intervals as conventional oils. And the oil companies, if anything, promise even less. "To give added protection and life to your engine, change your oil every 3000 miles." This same language appears on the back of both Pennzoil Synthetic and Pennzoil conventional oils. Valvoline synthetic makes a similar recommendation. Synthetics do get one unambiguous endorsement: Corvettes, Porsches, Vipers, and all AMG models from Mercedes-Benz come with Mobil 1 as the factory fill. Most synthetics mention GM 4718M in their list of claims; that's the unique spec created by General Motors for Corvette oil. It's a high-temperature requirement that tolerates less oxidation (thickening) and volatility (boil-off) on a standard engine test called Sequence IIIE, according to engineer Bob Olree of GM Powertrain. But don't expect to learn such details on any label. Mobil 1 at least uses straightforward declarative sentences. Most of the others read as though they were written by a lawyer looking for an escape clause. Why else would the following claim be so rubbery? "Pennzoil Synthetic motor oil is recommended for use in all engines requiring ILSAC GF-1, GF-2, API SJ, SH, or SG, and in engines requiring oils meeting GM 4718M." Okay, but does it actually pass those standards? "Yes," says James Newsom, Pennzoil's motor-oil product manager. Castrol Syntec, on its label, "exceeds" every standard it mentions. Hmm. Now that the meaning of "is" is in play, I have to wonder, does Syntec meet those standards as well? "It does," says Castrol's Juli Anne Oberg. While I have her on the phone, I ask if there will be a Syntec price reduction now that a lower-cost base stock has been substituted for the old synthetic. She says no.


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