No 10k OCI for me..

I just received my first Blackstone used oil analysis (at 183k miles) and it confirms what I’ve have thinking about OCI’s for my truck. Since new, I’ve gone back and forth with my dealership with the 10k OCI - not because I think a 10k OCI is preposterous, but because I actually read the manual and considered my vehicle severe duty, or at least close to it. Judging by what I felt was a bit of performance degradation, noisier engine, and a few other little things, I shortened my OCI to 7-8k miles. Not that I’m the tundra whisperer or anything, I just try to pay attention to a vehicle I depend on. According to Blackstone's report, that’s right about where I can run them out to. So I guess pat on the back to me. Haha.




I was a little concerned that I was washing one of the cylinders with fuel and diluting the oil after I found one of my spark plug was missing an electrode.. I found that out after I sent my oil analysis in so it was nice to see that clean.

I also realize that I really need to establish a trend with several UOA’s over time, which is the plan.

Only problem I see now is that this is making me think the motor would tolerate a blower just fine even with the miles…

 

I do 5k OCI's

Short trips usually (<5mi), some hauling (groceries), some towing (lawnmowers, tractors, friend's boats), severe weather. It's served me well and my dealership doesn't give me any grief over it.

Just did a 3k (round trip) down to the gulf coast and it ran like a top.

 

Why would the Dealer give you any grief over it? You would think that they would love the extra business, I know mine does and I too change my oil every 5k.

 

precisely my point (or most of it). OP had mentioned "going back and forth with his dealership over 10k OCIs"

However on the contrary, they'd probably prefer selling you a new truck in 5 years or a new motor vs the extra $500 that they got for my 5k OCI over the 5 years vs 10K.

 

Some of this dealer-pushed 10k oil change intervals is because of their "free" oil changes for buying a vehicle.

Similar to "lifetime powertrain warranty", dealers have pulled out all the stops over the years to convince people they are getting a good deal.

What good is "free oil changes for the first 2 years" if they won't do it but every 10K miles??

Since they've all been trained for that, it spills over into the paying customer requests of sooner oil changes.

Regardless of oil quality, 10K miles is too long for an OCI.

ToolCat

 

All my Toyotas have generally been twice a year.

Works out to about 8k km or 5k miles.

Once in the spring, once in the fall. Especially now that we plan on doing them ourselves, in the driveway, to avoid winter. Likely April 1st and Oct 1, or thereabouts.

 

When I was working and riving a long commute once a week (no towing or off-road), I did 10k OCI. Now that I'm retired and generally just drive around town with occasional long drives, I switched to 5k OCI (77k miles so far on my 2018).

Dan

 

When I bought my truck, the dealership service manager was incompetent. I don’t mean that to be unkind, but he seriously didn’t have the necessary knowledge, know how, or ability to run the service department. He leapfrogged the work your way up process and missed a lot on his way to the position. His policy was to follow the 10k oci no matter and interpreted the 140k mile warranty that I purchased to be void if I did my own oil changes or that 10k oci wasn’t followed. I told him he was full of poop. Well, that was after I caught him in a simple lie in front of most of the service department.

I also prepaid for “all necessary maintenance” out to 50 or 60k miles. When I asked them to change oil in the diffs per the service schedule in my manual, they said it wasn’t included in my prepaid service, but offered to do it for something ridiculous like $300 per axle. I asked specifically about diffs and tcase service when I purchased the maintenance plan and was told yes, so I ran that one up the chain and again, the service manager shut it down.

Eventually it went all the way to the owner once we pulled out the manual (one of the service advisors and head tech basically showed him the schedule written by Toyota and advised him that they themselves follow that schedule on their own tundras). The owner did refund my prepaid maintenance, so good on him for that, I guess.

Can you guess what the dealership said when I tried to buy some WS ATF to do a drain and fill at 50k?

I just wanted to have service records at the dealership that service was “done right” in case I decided to sell the truck when a new model came out. At this point, I don’t plan on selling it, so it’s a moot point. On a side note, we ended up buying our used sequoia from the same dealership and after bringing it in for an oil change, I discovered the skid plate only had two bolts and the bumper cover was attached with a single zip tie. It had two bolts and no zip ties when we bought it so I replaced the bolts and screws with dealership parts (parts store bolts like to rust out quickly around here). So much having things done right.

In the end, I’m glad I started doing all my own service in the tundra. I have been doing it on all my other vehicles so it wasn’t difficult to learn what the tundra needed. It’s kind of therapeutic actually.

 

I was always a believer in 3000-5000 mile oil change intervals. But in my wifes Lexus RX350, I always do 10k intervals since we bought it. It's a 346,000 miles now and still runs great. I do around 3k intervals on my Corvette because I drive it hard. The Tundra and Sequoia, I do around 7k.

 

This exactly. Now that we’ve used up our free oil changes on the sequoia, the service interval on the tag is 5k miles even with 0w20.

 

I can see 10k being feasible for several use cases. The base stock in my report looks to be plenty stable judging by viscosity. But the TBN denotes that there was definitely not enough additive to run this oil out to 10k. I’ve used almost exclusively Mobil1 but switched to Penzoil Platinum on good recommendation from the site and to try something new (maybe to validate my decision to have been running Mobil1…). The Mobil1 AFE behaved very similarly to this oil, imo, judging by engine smoothness, noise, etc. Either way, I’m glad to see that my 7-8k OCI has been a good choice. Many will say it’s wasteful and throwing away money to change it before 10k. In my case, it appears not to be wasteful, but needed.

 

Okay, what does TBN mean in the oil analysis report?

Dan

 

From Blackstone Labs: “TBN stands for Total Base Number and measures the amount of active additive present in the oil. It's a good test if you want to run your oil longer than you . . .”

 

Im sure the EPA is behind the 10k interval. Oil companies would rather sell you the oil. Dealers want to perform service.

Thinner oil plus longer intervals, sorry no thanks. I’ve religiously changed my tundra’s oil ever 5k miles for 110k, and it still loses a quart every 5k. 10k changes would be silly

 

5K for me. I dont care what they say .My truck my money my time.

 

Excellent, thank you!

Dan