Early Oil Change

[Robberbaron]

Sorry if this has been asked before, but I have a 2017 TRD Off Road with 4900 miles on it. I will take it to the dealer for the 5000 mile service next week. Not much to it, but I like to keep warranties intact if possible. Anyway I am planning a trip to Florida next month and my mileage will be less than 10000 miles even when I get back. I don't like the first oil change to go to 10000 miles and was going to change just the oil, not the filter (because it is a PIA) at about 5000 miles. Any concerns? Thank you for your input.

 

[chaosrob]

Changing oil and not the filter is a little like taking a shower and putting your dirty underwear back on in my opinion.

Sorry if this has been asked before, but I have a 2017 TRD Off Road with 4900 miles on it. I will take it to the dealer for the 5000 mile service next week. Not much to it, but I like to keep warranties intact if possible. Anyway I am planning a trip to Florida next month and my mileage will be less than 10000 miles even when I get back. I don't like the first oil change to go to 10000 miles and was going to change just the oil, not the filter (because it is a PIA) at about 5000 miles. Any concerns? Thank you for your input.

 

[enyce]

Nothing wrong with having the oil change before a long trip.
Make sure you explain this to the service rep at the dealership.

 

[rayofsi]

my first oil change took me .. 30 mins. mainly waiting for it to drain, and grabbing a drink in between.

 

[t-rex grrr]

The best practice is to change the oil and filter at the same time. Get the right tools and it'll be easy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDWa0gVPDmE

 

[Hybryd40]

Get a filter at the dealer and change the oil yourself at 5000 miles or you can have them do it. ( For a fee at 5000 ) then take it back at 10,000 and have your normal service completed. Thats what I did. I also am still in the mindset that 10,000 is to long to wait to change it.

 

[mustangr2]

I did mine early at 5k. The dealer even asked if I wanted to use my 10k service early. I just paid for it and used my 10k later.

 

[Robberbaron]

I appreciate the input. You shamed me into doing it the right way. In over 40 years of changing my own oil in dozens of vehicles, I have never cheated, but I thought the filter has to be designed for 10000 miles and I just wanted to get the residual filings and debris out of a new engine prior to 10000 miles.

 

[mcox522]

You don't have to take it to the dealer for service to keep your warranty intact. Keep receipts and fill out your maintenance book or you can also use Toyotas website to enter all of your service

 

[arehman11]

I had mine changed at 1,000 and at 5,000 and will stick to that schedule. It costs $58 at my dealer for an oil/filter change. Honestly, not worth it to me to change my self due to the cost being minimally higher than changing myself. Now, things like the diff and transfer cases I will DIY as the price is much higher.

 

[ridefast]

Run it till the 10,000 mile service. My oil still looks good at 9,000 miles. Unless of course you are doing the work yourself in the middle of winter. Then do it now so you don't freeze your tail off working in February.

Its 2017 not 1991, oil technology has improved greatly as well as how clean internal combustion engines run.

 

[Judd94]

To me it’s not really an early oil change. Manual has it for 5k miles if you do a lot of short trips or I also think lots of heavy hauling. I plan on doing mine every 5k unless there’s lots of highway driving. You’re really not wrong either way you go, just whichever tickles your fancy.

 

[1jzgte]

I appreciate the input. You shamed me into doing it the right way. In over 40 years of changing my own oil in dozens of vehicles, I have never cheated, but I thought the filter has to be designed for 10000 miles and I just wanted to get the residual filings and debris out of a new engine prior to 10000 miles.

Automotive Manufacturing has changed alot since 40 years ago. Your filter will last 10k miles. I would save your money and skip the filter. With only 5K miles on the engine, you've still got a lots of warranty left. Keep the filter and just change it at 10K.

 

[1engineer]

Everyone needs to realize that... guess what... all the oil in your block goes through your filter! There is no real time delay like many of you think. I don't know the exact rate for Toyota but suffice to say all of your oil goes through the filter many times a minute. Except when it doesn't. Every oil filter has a bypass, so if the filter gets too dirty (no, not the dirt you see. It's the dirt you don't see that can clog it up) oil will bypass the filter to keep the oil pressure under the max. If you have too high oil pressure then you will toast your bearings.

Bottom line: 99% of the time your oil is clean and your filter has everything that WAS in the oil. Changing the filter is actually more important than changing the oil guys. How often? I don't care if you change it every 200 miles. It's your vehicle. But having a "feeling" that 10K is too many miles on your oil just does not make any sense, unless your are a chemical engineer that specializes in synthetic fluids and additive packages. That just means that you have watched too many commercials and listened to people who don't have a clue what they were talking about with respect to modern synthetics. Grandpa.
If you want to know more than you ever need, cruise over to bobistheoilguy.com

 

[1engineer]

Everyone needs to realize that... guess what... all the oil in your block goes through your filter! There is no real time delay like many of you think. I don't know the exact rate for Toyota but suffice to say all of your oil goes through the filter many times a minute. Except when it doesn't. Every oil filter has a bypass, so if the filter gets too dirty (no, not the dirt you see. It's the dirt you don't see that can clog it up) oil will bypass the filter to keep the oil pressure under the max. If you have too high oil pressure then you will toast your bearings.

Bottom line: 99% of the time your oil is clean and your filter has everything that WAS in the oil. Changing the filter is actually more important than changing the oil guys. How often? I don't care if you change it every 200 miles. It's your vehicle. But having a "feeling" that 10K is too many miles on your oil just does not make any sense, unless your are a chemical engineer that specializes in synthetic fluids and additive packages. That just means that you have watched too many commercials and listened to people who don't have a clue what they were talking about with respect to modern synthetics. Grandpa.
If you want to know more than you ever need, cruise over to bobistheoilguy.com

 

[johnbt]

I took mine to the dealer last week for the first oil change. At 10,327 miles the old oil looked nearly new. It looked a lot better than my '67 or '70 Chevy looked a week after an oil and filter change. I'd be willing to bet Toyota set a 10k interval because they'd reliably go 15k or so between changes.

You know, the factories these days break the engines in before they sell the vehicles. The oil is better, the filters are better and the manufacturing is better.

I used to do 3k oil and filter changes back in the dark ages, but quit in the '80s when the manufacturers went to 7500 mile intervals and that was with dino oil.

I love getting 4 years' of free oil changes, tire rotations and state inspections - 2 from any Toyota dealer and 2 more from the seller.

Whatever lets you sleep well at night.

John

 

[nglayton]

I had mine changed at 1,000 and at 5,000 and will stick to that schedule. It costs $58 at my dealer for an oil/filter change. Honestly, not worth it to me to change my self due to the cost being minimally higher than changing myself. Now, things like the diff and transfer cases I will DIY as the price is much higher.

Is this a Toyota dealer? D@mn, that's cheap.

 

[gm350reratliff]

If you really want to know how "dirty" the oil actually is and how many miles you can get out of it, get an oil analysis done. That should tell you everything and more about your oil.

Oil life varies by several things such as type of engine, what type of fuel you use, how worn the engine is, driving style, length of commute, etc.

 

[Rmack]

Change the oil/filter on the first change always, regardless of miles. Later on after 20-30k if you want to change oil without changing filter it will not hurt anything, as long as the filter change does not exceed the required / recommended interval. I recommend first change at 3 or 5k. That is just my opinion based on years of engine building and performing oil analysis. I do not have any scientific data to base that on.

Toyota does in fact run the engine and change the oil on brand new vehicles, but this is nowhere near an engine break-in. It is mostly for camshaft break-in (most critical time for camshaft is first 20 minutes).

Your engine will not be broke in for several thousand miles. Mainly for seating the piston rings to the cylinder walls, main, rod and camshaft bearing break-in.

I have changed the oil in my Z-71 many times at 1/2 interval without changing the filter due to oil color from heavy pulling (fuel contamination). There is a completely separate (and costly) test for that, so I just change it. A high quality filter will easily do its job past the change interval as long as the engine internals are in good shape. If you are clogging an oil filter after 10k you have a lot more serious problems than dirty oil.

As a certified oil analysis operator on military aircraft I will tell you that oil can be good after many miles (hours for aircraft etc.), but will never be as good as new oil. Oil degrades with heat, metallic particles and contamination. Oil analysis looks for wear metals in PPM (Parts Per Million) and cannot be seen.

I look at it like this;

Oil/filter change recommendation is 10k

Change oil and filter at 10k = minimum requirement

Change oil only at 5k, oil and filter every 10k = above minimum requirement

Change oil and filter every 5k = well above minimum requirement, does not scientifically guarantee a longer engine life, but makes some of us just feel better.

I would rather buy a used 4Runner that had the oil changed every 10k and driven responsibly than one changed every 5k and beat once in a while.

 

[arehman11]

Is this a Toyota dealer? D@mn, that's cheap.

Yeah at a Toyota dealership. It’s still higher than the dealer I️ bought the truck from, they quoted 39.99, but they are 5 hours away.