lserlohn

Hi, all. It has been 6 months since the last time I changed engine oil. In my area, the winter is cold, below freeze point. According manual, I should change my engine oil. However, I only have 2500 miles on it, and because it is synthetic oil, I have about 2500 miles more to run.

Should I change the engine oil or not at this time?

chenxingha

Use the engine oil stick to sample and wipe the tip on a white cloth and compare the color with the color of a new synthetic oil. If the engine oil color is close to new, light yellow to light brown, your engine oil is fine. The rule of thumb is that if engine oil color becomes dark brown and smell burnt, you need to change it.

Another trick I learnt is that wipe the engine oil stick tip on white cloth, view it under light or sun and change angles - if you observe any flash reflections from the oil on the white cloth, change the oil as well as the filter. The flash reflections are signs of engine oil containimated by very small metal particles from internal friction.

Engine oil conditions are dependent on driving conditions as well as engine cooling. I use non-synthetic engine oil and my experience with them (mostly Mobile) is that the change-at-3000-miles rule is very close.

Lemex is an expert in engine oil (synthetic and non-synthetic) and his articles/suggestions in this forum have been very helpful to me.

Good luck.

Lexmex

At least once a year I would change the oil out. Since I work mostly at home, but am on the road for some long trips here and there, I don't get the same kind of mileage I did when I was south of the border and can go up to 6 months between changes as well, never an issue. The person who owned our 06 4Runner V8 before us also did about one oil change a year. They were an older couple who hardly drove the car in the many years they owned it. No issues.

I should also ask what kind of oil you are using. On mileage, I generally run mine out to about 7,000 (assuming under a year of use), but my fiance drives the 4Runner and gets a lot of mileage on that thing and we recently ran an Eneos 5W30 up to 10K before changing it and only lost about a quart with that over that amount of mileage.