Manual says the 1st oil change should be at 10,000 miles. Are you guys going to follow this or would it be beneficial to do this earlier such as do it on 5k miles to clear up the debris from a new engine earlier?

 

I always thought the same but today's engines are different that engines of old and Lexus says the 100% synthetic is good for well over 10K. Some will not agree and change at 5K ever fewer at 3K but today's Lexus motors do not need it.

 

Lexus switched to synthetic on the RX back in February 2010. A few 3RX owners have had their oil analyzed. Nothing bad showed up. You can always get the oil changed earlier if you want but it's not necessary.

 

You can change the oil earlier, but you'd be wasting your money. Synthetic Oil is still usually clean at 10K miles (depending on driving conditions), so changing earlier is useless.

 

out of curiosity, what is considered "clean."

Should I be changing my synthetic oil if it's not golden brown but a darker brown?

Or should we all be waiting until the dipstick oil is black and the level is low?

 

basically that is wrong.

If you want piece of mind I would invest in some oil analysis kits for a couple oil change cycels both fresh oil from the jug and some out of the drained oil.

A couple of these tests will let you know what the proper interval is for your specific vehicle.

Also if you are following the recommended interval, make sure you use the correct oil , and correct filter.

So dont expect 10k from a purolater classic can and conventional motor oil in the wrong spec.

Ideally either a quality aftermarket syntehtic oil filter and 0w20 Mobil 1 or something simialr

 

I would not worry about the color of the oil. Just change it when Lexus says to do so. You can send it off to be analyzed but you are just wasting money.