2011 GX460: first HPL drain

[Hohn]

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.

 

[edyvw]

Those engines are easy on oil. I am at 6,600mls on Castrol Edge 0W30 and looks all clean in my 5.7.
However, do not understand need for 15W40?

 

[thescreensavers]

Not following why you want to go to a 40 grade on this engine. It's super easy on oil and 20wt UOAs always show very low wear, albeit some so show fuel dilution.

I am personally running 0W30 ESP in mine, I really don't see a need to run a 40wt in it. My wife is the one that drives it and it's short tripped a bunch ~8k miles a year so that's my excuse of going up one grade I'll do a UOA on my OCI soon.

 

[Hohn]

Those engines are easy on oil. I am at 6,600mls on Castrol Edge 0W30 and looks all clean in my 5.7.
However, do not understand need for 15W40?

Need? No, there’s no need for 15w40. But I pored over the HPL line before I settled on this.

The Prado manual in several countries shows Toyota to be happy to let you run 20w50 in this engine. Toyota doesn’t seem to picky about thicker oils in this engine, so I figure why not try the thickest that I think makes sense for my geography?

For me it came down to a couple special things about this grade in HPL’s PCMO line:
— It passes 15w but has nearly identical density to their SAE 40. There’s almost certainly very little VII in this oil since higher VII treat rates drop density.
— I believe base oil viscosity matters when you consider something like the TDC and BDC piston reversals where the rings will go into boundary/mixed lubrication. Higher is better IMO.
— The flashpoint is one of the highest in the whole HPL line.
— It has very high density for lube oil. This means that it is transporting more heat since the mass flow through the engine will higher. This should make internal temperatures slightly more uniform and slightly lower.
— Since this vehicle sees a large fraction of short trip driving, I expect the thicker base oil to retain a thicker residual oil film and better tolerate the fuel dilution that accompanies frequent short trips.

We’ll see what the UOA says soon enough.