Since this GX was “new to me” nearly two years ago, I used HPL for the first time in my life and gave it the most basic possible entry: PCMO 5w30.
Today after 9k miles, that PCMO was drained. Not because the oil was done, but because I wanted to get my drain intervals on the 10k-miles-with-HPL routine. I also wanted to switch to the HPL 15w40 PCMO as the long term oil for this engine, so I didn’t sample the 5w30 because I didn’t want to baseline or build trend on an oil I was moving away from.
What was interesting was how clean the oil stayed. Since this 1UR-FE uses the Toyota cartridge filter, it was trivial to inspect the filter for evidence of sludge or other cleaning. There was ZERO finding in the filter. Absolutely nothing.
Since we know that HPL does clean quite effectively, I can only conclude that this 1UR-FE was basically immaculate if the maiden voyage of HPL shows no evidence of cleaning in the oil nor the OEM filter.
Since the vehicle’s one prior owner had all the service done at a local (to him) Lexus Dealer, all the change events are documented. Except, the kind of oil used wasn’t mentioned. There was a windshield sticker with Valvoline on it and it said “advanced synthetic” so perhaps that was what he previous owner opted for? He paid $130 for an oil change, so I’d HOPE that was synthetic!
Anyway, the prior oil— which I believe but cannot prove to be Valvoline Advanced— kept this 1UR-fe essentially immaculate. Clean enough that the HPL did no noticeable cleaning in 9k miles on its first go. So that’s a pretty good endorsement of whatever prior oil was used (and also the 1UR-FE which is known to be durable if you keep the coolant sealed).
I’ll but following the @dnewton3 method on this vehicle— grabbing an early sample here in the first 100 miles or so as a baseline and then periodically resample every 5k or so establish the trend.
Today after 9k miles, that PCMO was drained. Not because the oil was done, but because I wanted to get my drain intervals on the 10k-miles-with-HPL routine. I also wanted to switch to the HPL 15w40 PCMO as the long term oil for this engine, so I didn’t sample the 5w30 because I didn’t want to baseline or build trend on an oil I was moving away from.
What was interesting was how clean the oil stayed. Since this 1UR-FE uses the Toyota cartridge filter, it was trivial to inspect the filter for evidence of sludge or other cleaning. There was ZERO finding in the filter. Absolutely nothing.
Since we know that HPL does clean quite effectively, I can only conclude that this 1UR-FE was basically immaculate if the maiden voyage of HPL shows no evidence of cleaning in the oil nor the OEM filter.
Since the vehicle’s one prior owner had all the service done at a local (to him) Lexus Dealer, all the change events are documented. Except, the kind of oil used wasn’t mentioned. There was a windshield sticker with Valvoline on it and it said “advanced synthetic” so perhaps that was what he previous owner opted for? He paid $130 for an oil change, so I’d HOPE that was synthetic!
Anyway, the prior oil— which I believe but cannot prove to be Valvoline Advanced— kept this 1UR-fe essentially immaculate. Clean enough that the HPL did no noticeable cleaning in 9k miles on its first go. So that’s a pretty good endorsement of whatever prior oil was used (and also the 1UR-FE which is known to be durable if you keep the coolant sealed).
I’ll but following the @dnewton3 method on this vehicle— grabbing an early sample here in the first 100 miles or so as a baseline and then periodically resample every 5k or so establish the trend.
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I'll do a used oil analysis on my OCI soon.
