I always change oil every 3000 miles. And fortunately, my annual mileage is about 8500 miles.

The dealership recommended that I continue to change the oil every 3000 miles, unless it takes me longer than 6 months to rack up 3000 miles, in which case it should be changed at that 6 month mark.

Does this sound reasonable? So far, it has taken me less than 6 months to reach 3000 mile intervals.

Read your manual and do exactly as it says, forget what the dealer says.

The manual, if I recall correctly, recommends an oil change every 5000 miles. I'm not changing my oil once per year.

Why not?

Koz

If your annual mileage is 8,500 miles as you state, then changing your oil at 5,000 mile intervals as recommended in the owner's manual would result in an oil change about every seven months.

I really don't see much of a problem with that unless you have extremely severe service conditions in those seven months (constant short trips, heavy towing, racing, extremely dirty environment, etc.)

The dealer is not going to recommend that you come in for service less often than you currently are. If you were receiving "free" oil changes, I'll bet this same dealership would have you come back every 5,000 miles just to meet the warranty.

One year and 8,500 miles is definitely reasonable with a quality synthetic, and MAY even be doable with a conventional oil, monitored by a UOA. I believe Honda now has a 10,000 mile OCI on some of their vehicles, and they do not specify the use of synthetics, although i would be very reluctant to take a conventional oil out to 10K.

The manual says to change your oil at 5000 or every 6 months whichever comes first.

Most of it, for me, is comfort level. So for me, spending $25 + change for a lube/oil/filter every couple months is cheap insurance for a smooth running and well maintained engine. And yes, that's "always the way I've done it".

Some folks here are obviously mechanically inclined and are more comforatble with ins and outs of oil and engine performance. I'm not one of those people, so I won't tend to strech those solidly-ingrained "3000 mile" boundaries.

Thanks all for the opinions.

I just wait for mine to pop up the "maint" light on the dash, figure those silly Toyota engineers knew what they were doing when the added that little feature!

YMMV

The 3000-mile oil change is just baloney IMO, invented by dealers trying to scare people into spending more money. Funnily enough, most people I know who change their oil religiously at 3K miles are also those who know the least about cars.

I use 5K miles as a minimum, and even then I check to see the state of the oil. If I've been doing a lot of freeway driving and my oil is still clear as a whistle at 5K miles (which it often is) then I'm happy running it another 2-3K. Obviously if your driving is 90% in the city, or you tow a lot, then the oil might not look quite as good at 5K miles.

If you're doing 90% short trips (a few miles or less), then I'd change the oil at least every 6 months - don't wait for the 5,000. Lots of short trips are the worst thing for a car, because the engine doesn't stay hot enough long enough for totally efficient combustion, and the oil will get dirtier faster.
If you're driving infrequent but longer trips, then the oil might be OK for 5,000.
I used to drive 50 miles to work one-way, and the oil still looked pretty good after 7,500 miles. Now my commute is only 4 miles one-way, and with that same car, the oil was pretty nasty after only 4,000 miles.
We're talking $60 for twice a year versus $30 to do it once and stick to the 5,000 rule. Not worth saving the $30, IMHO.

At my work we have a new Trailblazer that has that feature. When we hit 5,000 miles the light was not on yet. We, or maybe I should say "I" decided 5,000 miles was a resonable figure to change the oil. So I guess that light will never come on, at least I hope not.




I would think the thousands of Toyota owners that had sludge in thier 3.0 V6 would disagree with you. Newer engines with higher horsepower tend to work harder and put a greater stain on the oil. Have you notice the 3.3 V6 in the Camry has less horsepower than the 3.0 V6.

I thought the general trend with modern engines using modern materials (and modern oils) is towards longer oil-change intervals -- a few Japanese and European-built cars now reportedly have 10K oil change recommendations.

I bet that for any late-model car you'd be hard pressed to find a recommendation in the manual to change the oil any more than every 5K miles under normal conditions (but I could be wrong), and in the 10 years I drove in the UK I'd never even heard of 3K-mile oil changes. Even my local mechanic says 3K changes are somewhat pointless.

The Porche SUV has 20000 mile OCI with Mobil 1 from the Factory.

It's all about engine blow by and the quality of the oil.

The 3k mile change is a product of the 70's when engine tolerances were very loose compared to today's motors. So with tighter tolernaces has come less blow by and thus cleaner oil after a given amount of miles.

The issue with short trips is they do not get the oil up to temp to boil off the water that mixes with the oil via condensation inside the motor. The water mixes with the oil and the end result is a toxic mixture.

Oils have improved (actually the detergent content has improved) and now oils can hold the contaminants in solution better and keep them away from the metal surfaces and bearing surfaces.

With the engine improvements and oil improvements, most manufacturers are moving toward longer intervals. IMHO we're just starting to see this in the past few years because now maintenance programs are included in many cars (BMW, Audi, etc) and the manufacturers are on the hook for these costs. They're going back to the engineering departments and revualting the need for short intervals based on current technology and determining if they can save a few bucks by stretching out the interval. Case and point was my 2001 Audi A4. The 2000 model year had 5,000 mi intervals and the 2001 model year went to 7,500 mi intervals but nothing engine related had changed (basically the exact same car). Audi was now on the hook for 6 oil changes for the 2001 versus 10 oil changes for the 2000 over the course of the free 50,000 maintenance program. Audi is approaching 1million cars sold a year. If they can save $25-$30 on every car they are looking at $20-$30million saved. Not too shabby.

Since you have the V8, and it is a VERY low-wearing engine, I would recommend switching to synthetic and just change the oil once a year and forget about it. My wife only drives her car about 4,000 miles per year, 10 miles each way to-from work. It pretty much never gets driven unless she's going to/from work and I change it about once a year.

If you are really worried about it, drain a small sample at 5000-6000 miles and have it sent off for analysis:

http://www.blackstone-labs.com

Ricky