Oilchange intervals 5.000 or 10.000 miles

[nielshm]

 

The Car Care Nut is extremly popular on Youtube as a Toyota mechanic with a huge experience in a wide range a models. It's mostly cars sold in the US, but could just as well be european models. 

One thing is repeated again and again. Change your oil every 5.000 miles, and make things last forever. He claims that 10.000 miles intervals only can garantee the car to outlast the warranty, and some extra. 

I don't know what to think. I don't change my oil more often than 10.000 miles. Compared to other brands, Toyotas intervals are quite low, and I don't hear other brands suffering from extreme wear and tear. Other cars might have a ton of other issues, but I would be disappointed if 5.000 mile change is required to make sure my car lasts 150-200.000 miles. 

What are your thougts about this issue?

[Yugguy1970]

10k is fine for me but then I do mine yearly with the service so it's around 7 or 8k.    When I did higher mileage I did every 10k.  As much for the filter as the oil.

[Mojo1010]

Think it's best to ask what @TonyHSD does, his car is on 250k. Or read his posts. 

[Roy124]

Not a Toyota but a high mileage Mercedes petrol.  We upped the viscosity to 20w50 and it drank oil.  The system ran a regular miles to oil change.  The norm was 10,000 miles.

I was putting in about a pint every 1 000 miles.  The effect was to push the oil change up to 19,000.  

Where the car is not burning oil I would not recommend going over the limit.   I was advised by my garage that one month or 1,000 miles was the maximum in order to maintain the warranty.

 

 

[Cyker]

I think in the USA the oil has a harder life, as they're usually doing mega distances at high speed; Here with our predominately urban speeds and colder climate, the oil won't see such extreme heat cycles.

It makes even less sense with the hybrids, since the engine is running so much less.

We have quite a few people here, admittedly mostly diesels, with cars that are well over 100k on just the standard 1 year/10k oil change interval.

I'm sure 5k oil changes will increase the engine longevity by some amount - Oil is the life blood of the engine, esp. the timing chain - but whether that increase is significant enough to be worth paying twice as much and using twice as much oil over the life of the engine, I'm not so sure.

[FROSTYBALLS]

If 10,000 mile service intervals were designed to ensure engines just outlast the warranty, we'd have high numbers of members with ruined engines within 5-7 years or so, depending on the length of warranty. We don't.

Obviously if you're intending to keep a car for 200,000 miles, more frequent oil maintenance may be worthwhile, but the question is are you intending to keep the car that long?

Vehicle manufacturers do a lot of research and testing on vehicles, engines, servicing, etc - far more than any technician - so are unlikely to design such short obsolescence such as this into their vehicles, especially for fleet cars.

I would suggest that 12 month/10,000 mile service intervals are sufficient for a lot of drivers - same as Hyundai. Yes, some manufacturers have another 2-2,500 miles on their service intervals, but how many owners (excluding company or fleets) of those cars actually do the additional mileage?

 

[nielshm]

Back in 2000's, VW had 30.000 mile intervals. Way too much, and engines failed.

It got reduced to 20.000 mile, and many diesels has gone past 200.000 mile. Turbos and oil pumps have blown due to sludge, but engines did'nt wear out.

It just seems to much to change more often. If the dealer could offer a splash and dash oil change at a low price, maybe I would from time to time, holidays, 1000 mile trips etc.

[TonyHSD]

I agreed with all posts above. 
Wht Toyota recommends 10k miles or 12 months is perfectly fine and indeed not a high miles intervals for today’s cars and engines. 
About the car care not recommendations of 5k miles instead I think it’s a bit too short for most people. Plus he shows often cars that burn oil and they always been on 5k oil changes. So not really a deal breaker. I have my car mostly serviced at 10k which in fact we’re below 10k most of the time like between 6-9k miles. I use exclusively petronas 0w20 since 2016 now over 200k miles. Car currently at 257000 and keep going strong. Engine is healthy but does consume oil , maybe up to 1.5-2lyr per 10k miles now. It started to use oil at around 140k miles and slowly increased consumption, but no other issues, drive so good and efficiency is spot on,  Oul changes within 10k miles will not be bad for your engine. Anything above or saw oil over two years os when the rings start to go downhill. Ans excessive ready mode for heating. I believe this is what caused my oil consumption.