2008 Toyota Corolla 1.8L on Mobil 1
- Thread starter RobbS
- Start date
That engine has never had ring problems, or any other problems. That engine routinely goes over 500k miles on dino oils with spotty change intervals, driven by people who don't care about car maintenance at all. It is not powerful. It is not smooth. It is peak ICE reliability. One of the greatest engines of all time. I think anything beyond whatever name brand is on sale at Walmart is just wasting money.
Edit to remove reference to odometers stop working after 300k miles, someone already addressed that.
How many engines are out there with people's number one complaint that the odometer stopped working after 300,000 miles
Edit to remove reference to odometers stop working after 300k miles, someone already addressed that.
How many engines are out there with people's number one complaint that the odometer stopped working after 300,000 miles
Patman
Staff member
It’s even worse for Corollas here in Canada because the odometer stops at 299,999km which is only 186,000 miles and that’s an easy milestone for them to achieve.
That would honestly bother me because I love racking up the mileage and part of it is being able to see those large numbers on the odometer!
It’s odd that a company like Toyota would make a mistake like this, knowing how reliable their cars are.
That would honestly bother me because I love racking up the mileage and part of it is being able to see those large numbers on the odometer!
It’s odd that a company like Toyota would make a mistake like this, knowing how reliable their cars are.
My impression is that in Japan, it is extremely expensive to keep older vehicles registered due to laws, cheaper to buy a new car. So maybe some unconscious bias in the software engineers' priorities when writing the code for the odometer... wasn't even a consideration.
If they drove on the correct side of the road and had the steering wheel in the correct location, we would all be importing older vehicles from Japan.
I lived in Japan from 1965 until 1968 in those days the average Japanese family could not afford a car. they mostly rode public transportation. The most common thing you saw many families had a bike or a small motorcycle 50 to 125cc.
And 30 years ago all of China had bicycles, zero cars.
Current age, the US government had to outright BAN China from letting me buy a brand new $8000 BYD electric car, which I would write a check for today. Would have been for sale and available right now. But not allowed. Big Mommy has to protect us all from having cheap brand new cars. Can't have that. Have to buy a $45,000 AMERICAN car to keep me safe. THANKS BIG MOMMY!
If you move to China you can purchase it, right? That's an option.
You wouldn't even need the pine sap for that vehicle. Although you might have to MacGyver a charging setup in the woods.
Maybe he meant 167,000 km?
South America already has them, with a 100%+ tariff. People are buying them anyway.
There's a guy on Youtube, DIY Dave, who's been chasing oil consumption for 4 years in his 170k-ish Corolla with a 1ZZ-FE. Interestingly he's thrown everything at it besides Restore & Protect. He has tried Berryman's, HPL and even Valvoline Premium Blue Restore Gen2 and a bunch of others.
Coincidentally today he posted ripping off the oil pan and scoping the cylinders and piston undersides. Everything was surprisingly not super clean besides the drain holes. There's a good amount of varnish/lacquer, maybe some sludge. I think he burns a quart per tank of gas. It's interesting a full assault of 11 or so products didn't do more cleaning. They were all quick fixes though so maybe Restore & Protect would do something over 12-20k. He'd have to add 40-60 quarts of oil lol
Back on topic, he bought it used at 170k so hard to say what oil was used.
Coincidentally today he posted ripping off the oil pan and scoping the cylinders and piston undersides. Everything was surprisingly not super clean besides the drain holes. There's a good amount of varnish/lacquer, maybe some sludge. I think he burns a quart per tank of gas. It's interesting a full assault of 11 or so products didn't do more cleaning. They were all quick fixes though so maybe Restore & Protect would do something over 12-20k. He'd have to add 40-60 quarts of oil lol
Back on topic, he bought it used at 170k so hard to say what oil was used.
I played that game with a 1.8 for about 3 months, and then spent probably $300 on an in-chassis
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Wonder how much that has hurt Toyota sales? I know there is no longer one in my driveway even though my 2004 didn't burn oil. I decided not to risk it.
Not much. Not every design can be perfect.. Id buy another Toyota. Only sold that car because I had too many at the time.
The ring problem could have been fixed the very next model that they realized what it was and they didn't.
Me too. This all kind of started when HPL came on board and @OVERKILL found it was cleaning up with Mobil 1 0w20 was leaving behind. Hard to believe. However, if I were to guess, it's largely due to the lack of high-end group V which offers the solvency needed. It seems that the lower tier Mobil 1 line uses some AN but just enough to keep things relatively clean. *Not sure this applies to Triple Action. I'm going to say it likely doesn't as they advertise Clean as one of the 3 Actions LOLOL.
Just an anecdotal observation but the oils containing known group V do appear to keep internals cleaner.
Some of us on BITOG, me included, are much like a detective somewhat early in an investigation. We know some things but there is so much we do not know. I know that the following things affect formation and/or clean-up of deposits: base oil solvency, antioxidant types and concentrations, base oil resistance to chemical reactions and thermal stability, detergent types and concentrations, dispersant types and concentrations, viscosity index improver type(s) and concentrations, mystery substances (like VRP's magic substance), synergy, antagonism, and maybe volatility.
I've seen oils with more base oil polarity form significantly more soft insolubles, which are deposit precursors, from high temperatures than oils with less polarity. It was surprising to see that. I apparently overestimated the ability of polar oils to keep those blobs soluble. Quaker State Ultimate Protection and Euro 5W-40 are relatively very non-polar, yet perform very well in terms of not forming those insolubles. The many factors in the first paragraph likely explain the behavior, but I don't know the relative contribution of each factor for those Quaker State oils. The Quaker State case seems to indicate that for deposit prevention, excellent performance can be obtained even with a relatively very non-polar oil mix. Group I has decent polarity/solubility, but we know it tends to perform badly in resistance to forming deposits because it ranks badly in the resistance to chemical reactions category. Better antioxidants help but they can't deal with every single aggressive oxidant, so the reactions still occur early on, even with the fresh antioxidants.
As you know, LS Jr and HPL's tests of multiple M1 0W-40's found a wide range of PDSC oxidation test results, and 0W-40 FS had the longest (best) time. Antioxidants and base oil types are the biggest factors in that test. 0W-40 FS was the only motor oil in that test without some ester base oil. I don't know the effect of that on the PDSC result but it's an interesting formulation difference, given the result. I bet the antioxidant types and/or concentrations are different by being more focused on long drain capabilities.
Non-euro M1 and PP seem to not prevent deposits as well as I used to think. I do not know why. For PP, we can rule out blaming its GTL base oil for being prone to reacting chemically.
I also have a 2008 Toyota Corolla 1.8L. I did extensive research on the forums before buying it.
It might be the most reliable car Toyota ever built. They typically go 300,000 miles with very few repairs and minimal maintenance.
Their simple design makes servicing easy, with a lot of room under the hood for a mechanics hands to fit.
They are surprisingly reliable between 200k and 300k mles (as mentioned in the url posts below).
With these cars, oil really doesn't matter, as long as you change it at 5,000 miles as Toyota recommends.
I use a low priced Dexos 1 Gen 3 High Mileage Full Synthetic 5W-30.
I did some google searches, no one complains about deposits, sludge, or varnish with these vehicles,
so using Valvoline R&P might not be needed.
You may wish to see these posts that discuss the 300k longevity of the 2003 to 2008 Toyota Corollas.
