They must know what they’re talking about if they changed it to 10,000 miles. As far as i know I’m not a “severe service” driver unless my commute changes in the future.
According to your calculations you would drive about 5000 miles a year so annual oil changes seems like your schedule.
1 Like
That’s my take. I expect they are right, that method likely works ok. For the first 80-100k miles.
+1
My NX 450h+ also has oil changes specified as “every 10k miles or 12 months”, whichever comes first. With my previous vehicles, I wouldn’t go that anywhere near that long between oil changes, but because I only use this PHEV’s gas engine on rare occasions, I am comfortable with 10k miles/12 months.
When I do utilize the gas engine, it is for highway drives of at least 30 minutes, but I estimate that–in total–the ICE engine has run for ~3k miles out of the 9k currently on the odometer.
Anyway… as long as the OP doesn’t use his car for mostly short-trip, local drives, that 10k mile/12 month regimen is probably OK, but if he has any misgivings, then more frequent oil changes wouldn’t be a bad idea.
As the old saying tells us, no engine ever suffered from frequent oil changes (unless they were done by a screw-up at a quick lube joint 
)
1 Like
Cool, thanks. Im not going to lose any sleep over this then.
I had a quick lube place that i think stripped the nut during an oil change once causing problems on a different car. I don’t trust the quick lube places to do an excellent job on oil or other fluid changes. Im not sure how well trained and thorough their technicians are and how much they rush through each car’s service
1 Like
They are called “quick lube” places b/c they do it quickly. Oil & filter changes are like cooking food, better results if done slowly.
1 Like
Yup!
Basically, the options–with oil changes, medical treatment, cooking food, and even making coffee–are…
Do you want it fast?
or
Do you want it done properly?
2 Likes
Do you think anyone has accumulated more than 100,000 miles on a Toyota during the last 14 years? What hapens after 100,000 miles?
If he works 5 days each week that equals 210 miles per week, 10,920 per year.
Yeah correct. 20 miles one way so I’m back to 5000 miles and six month changes.
Who said we couldn’t get this up to 200 replies?
Pay for one extra oil change a year. Seems minimal.
Did you buy a new Corolla?
1 Like
Yes.
If engine still runs, the odometer turns to 100,001
1 Like
It is a special occasion. I watched carefully when my riviera was about to turn over to 500,000. I pulled over and took a picture of it with my phone. Even the IT guy couldn’t get it downloaded and then got a new phone and Danged if I even know where the old phone is or was. Once in a lifetime opportunity and gone for Ever.
He might have been having trouble figuring out the folder naming conventions. On my Android cell phone there’s a folder titled “photos”. But there’s not a single photo there … lol … all the photos on the phone are stored in another folder titled something incomprehensible, like “x394sxyiou” .
That because, they Mama never learned them, “Righty tighty, Lefty loosey”
(Intentional Misspelling and Horrible Grammar…)
3 Likes
It would be interesting to know how many hours of training the staff at those shops get before they start picking up wrenches. I had a part time job at a gas station as a teenager, and I got no training at all. Thinking on it, I did get 10 minutes training how to work the tire changing machine. I didn’t do oil changes or fix the cars, only pump gas and fix flat tires.
2 Likes
Short tripper here, 2017 rav4, oil change once a year, basically every 2500 miles. So far so good.
2 Likes
Looks like someone may have answered this question with actual data, on the 2023 version of this car.
At 1,000 miles he did an oil change, sent oil sample to a lab.
At 3,000 miles (twice as far) he did another oil change, sent oil sample to a lab.
The data showed a significant downward trend in wear metals in the oil samples. Meaning the second sample, had significantly less wear metals in it than the first, despite double the amount of miles.
He argues that the data shows that doing a brake in oil change is a good thing to do. If the engine was already broken in, we would expect the wear metals to be relatively the same, if not the second sample to actually have more wear metals than the first because the car went 2,000 miles on the oil over 1,000 miles. But that is not what the data showed. The data showed a significant downward trend.
He argues that back when brake in oil changes were relatively common, and almost everybody agreed they were necessary, the majority of people were buying new cars and not leasing them. With inflation and everything, more and more people are resorting to leasing new cars instead of buying them. People who lease cars don’t take as good care of the car, because they will end up getting rid of it once the lease is over, and just do the bare minimum of what is required. Additionally, he argues that vehicles get worse gas mileage with brake in oil vs non-brake in oil. So the manufacturers can get better gas mileage claims with regular oil over brake in oil.
I just found these videos interesting. Seems to suggest brake in oil changes still have some benefit. If it’s $100+ (cost of oil change at dealership if not free or don’t do it yourself) worth of damage by not doing a brake in oil change, or if you are likely to even have the car once you will notice the differences, I doubt it, but who knows that is all speculation without actual data.
Great videos. Thanks for the links.
The bottom line is that his videos show that there are more contaminants in the engine oil during the first few thousand miles and that those contaminants are reduced as the engine “breaks in” - at least on a 2023 Toyota Corolla and his Boxster. It doesn’t, in any way, answer the question as to whether that negatively affects engine wear, which is really what we care about.
I’m always a bit leery when videos are viewed through the lens of racing engines. Race engines have very narrow operating parameters. They don’t need to start when it’s -20F, idle for extended periods of time, or operate smoothly over a wide RPM range. They do offer insight into high-rpm, high-temperature operating conditions as it relates to oil. The videos were informative nonetheless.
3 Likes
Exactly. That there are more wear products in the first 1000 miles does not justify ‘break-in’ oil, as long as those wear products don’t interfere with the oil’s ability to lubricate the engine.
4 Likes