My wife's Avalon, which is a very nice car in almost all ways, has the same engine, and same oil filter setup. The fly in this car's ointment is that downright evil oil filter setup. I will address your questions in order.
1) How easy/hard is it to do one of these Toyota cartridge filters on this engine.
It's not, it's a total PITA. There are TWO openings, not one, potintially doubling the opportunity for leaks. There's a little cap on the end of the housing you must undo, which allows access to a little port that you plug a little spigot affair into. It pre-drains the housing for clean removal. The spigot is the white thing that comes in the filter element box. Then you open the main housing to switch filter elements. Putting the whole thing back together requires that you carefully install two floppy o-rings, and apply different torque for the housing and cap. Don't even think about going to an Iffy-Boob. As of our last change, the little cap wouldn't come off at all. I just loosened the main housing, like any other filter, and removed it into a plastic bag.
2) Anything special I should know or think of for the first time?
Oh yeah -- be careful of handling the housing the first time. It's nice cast aluminum, but the first time, I found it had burrs on it, and ended up with a painful metal splinter. After rubbing it down with a piece of leather, it seems burr free now, but I'd still just wear gloves to be safe and comfortable.
3) Thoughts on Oil choice for this engine (No M1 bashing please)
I've used GC and now, PP 5w-20, but alas no UOA yet. On a subjective level, no discernable differences. Both sounded great, no bad noises on start, etc. Our engine seemed to darken both pretty quickly. The one noticeable difference: mileage. Per the computer, the car is doing 2-3 mpgs better on the 20 wt than it did on the much heavier GC. No real surprise there, I suppose.
4) How many litres/quarts does this engine take? (I know I can look in the manual, but in case anyone already knows)
As already stated, it is a 6.5 qt fill.
5) Anything else you can offer.
Yes. Somewhere on the internet, before we owned a 2GR-powered car and I cared about it, I saw someone selling a conversion kit to allow the use of a normal, disposable spin-on filter. But I can't find it now. I'm looking for one, and urge you to do so also. If you find it, pleeeease let me know.
