homeyclaus
New member
If I were you, I would send away for an analysis. What I meant by my other post is that visual observations mean absolutely nothing unless looking for something catastrophic. Another thing that I find funny is justification for oil change intervals with no concrete data other than "I towed some" or "I live in a dusty environment" or something like that. Someone who represents Toyota (engineers, techs, lawers, marketing, other) determined we can go 10K between changes on engine and longer than that with diff and even longer on transmission. I don't really care who as Toyota is willing to stand behind their word. 10K matches what I know from my off highway design experience and if anything is a little short. Again, we all know changing your fluids on shorter intervals won't make anyone go broke or really hurt anything except possible introduction of contaminants during changes. So, have at it but don't depend on your eyes when a lab can give you much bettter results.
I totally agree on the used oil analysis, and the results would have been useful indeed. Everything else is guessing, although I can't call it a bad guess to say that sludge is not desirable thing. That's very different from saying "my engine oil was lighter than cola colored and I changed it because cars in the 70's needed it changed at 3000 miles too."