Help on new Toyota Corolla, what Oils for?

[Bob Miller]

With the advent of GF-4, and Toyota being rather anal retentive about 5W-30, what oils do you experts recommend for 3k oil and filter changes?

My dealer seems to use Castrol for dealer changes.

Driving is about 80% hiway at 60-75 MPH.

TIA

 

[pa04prius]

Everything I've read here says that Toyotas love Mobil 1. Why do the 3k OCI? My wife's '03 calls for 5k OCI and that's what we have done since we got it. Going on 3 years old and never had ANY problem with the car.

 

[ruking77]

I am not sure what you mean. Or what are your real concerns or issues. You can continue to use the GF-3 oils. Or you can use the GF-4 oils, which are backwards compatible. Seems to me you have a buying opportunity if they are putting the GF-3 stocks on sale to make way for the GF4 stocks. Both GF3/4 come in 5w30. I would continue to use 5w30 if that is what the OM on the Corolla recommends.

I considered a Toyota Corolla vs a Honda Civic. All my reseach indicated that Mobil One in the recommended viscosity is probably one of the best. I went with the Civic and the Civic's recommended oil change interval is 10,000 miles normal/5,000 severe.(OM recommends 5w20, if it matters, FYI) After the meager warranty I would have no concerns about going to a 15,000 to 20,000 mile interval with Mobil One 0w20-5w20.

There is literally a plethora of good to GREAT conventional oils. Mobil, Chevron, EM etc etc. Some UOA's OCI indicated that the Exxon Mobil Superflo 5w20 still has plenty of TBN left at 9100 miles!!!! So I truly don't know why you would change at the 3,000 mile OCI.

[ February 25, 2005, 04:34 PM: Message edited by: ruking77 ]

 

[Whimsey]

In all honesty with 3,000 mile oil and filter changes just about any quality dino oil will work fine. The Toyota's Castrol oil, assuming it's the dino GTX, will work fine for 3,000 mile oil change intervals. If you change the oil yourself you should look at Havoline or Chevron. Both great dino oils at great prices. As I said previously there are many other good dino oils out there. Check in the UOA posts and see what other oils have produced as far as metal wear.

Whimsey

 

[Bryanccfshr]

IF you change the oil yourself why not go with the latest and greatest? For the warranty period I think the Mobil 7500 oils are an outstanding value. Same for any of the neweer oils. The Corola motor is a great unit. You can run 5k mile intervals on any approved oil and never have to worry about lubrication issues. 6 months or 5k miles. Easy enough.

 

[JohnBrowning]

Actualy Toyota is not anal retentive at all. If you read the wording in the owners manul and the Passport Maintence book they use rather liberal wording. They use the words recomend and preffered. They even tell you it is ok to use 10W30 if 5W30 is not available. They do recomend that you go back to 5W30 as soon as possable ie next oil change interval. ANal would be if they had their own spec. like Mercedes, BMW, GM, Saab etc......

To be perfectly honest if it were my car I would have M1 0W40 in it. If I felt compelled to run a 30Wt. oil I would go with M1 10W30 or M1 10W30 EP. We already know that some of the 1.8L I4's in the Corolla like to burn oil latter in life. To date everyone that has expressed oil consuption issues at 70,000-120,000 miles in these engines has run 5W30 synthetic or regular oil and usualy the 5000-7500 mile OCI. buster foud that oils with higher HTHS reguardless of the SAE viscosity did better in his vechile I belive. I belive Redline 5W20 with an HTHS of 3.3 or GC 0W30 with an HTHS of 3.6 used the least amount of oil in his Corolla as compared to Amsoil S2K 0W30 and M1 5W30. PM buster ans see what he has to say about wich oil worked best. I might be wrong on that though so get buster's input.

If you want a good dino oil you might try Mobil Clean 5000 or 7500 in 10W30 or 10W40. No one really has any experince with them as they just came out as new products. You can get them at Walmart and AutoZone.

 

[mikemc]

For 3K intervals on a 5w30 I like Chevron Supreme or Havoline, whichever is cheaper or easier to find. Great oils at a bargain price.

 

[Alan]

3K to 5K intervals using Chevron/Havoline 5W30 with a ST4967 oil filter would take good care of this motor.

Add a Fram Sure Drain to make oil changes a snap!

 

[Al]

Any GF-4 will probably surpass the previous GF-3 oils. And in spite of all the commotion and some arguing which oil is best..Its hard to point to a bad Used oil analysis and blame it on the oil. You would have to try hard to pick a bad oil these days. Use the one with the nicest bottle.

 

[Bill in Utah]

Hi,

I've got a 4 month old Corolla with 11k on it. LOVE THE CAR!

I've used Castrol Syntec Blend 5w-30 SL on one 5k UOA and it's in that section. The TBN was 2.5 so there is alot left in the 5k useage for $2 a quart oil.

I'm running a mix of the Castrol blend and Syntec SM 5w-30 right now and will run a UOA on it.

My next Oil will be the Mobil DC Blend 5w-30. I'll catch a UOA and see how it likes it.

I think I'm going to stay on 5k OCIs for the Warrenty and for $2 - $2.50 a quart you can get some impressive oil. I'd rather save the $$ and keep a trend of UOAs for the $$ I'd spend for Syn.

Maybe after the 60k warrenty is gone, I'll go with Mobil 1 EP?? or Dino for .69 cents a quart (Since I have tons of it...)

Enjoy the car.

Bill

 

[Radhe]

I have a 04 Corrolla with 11K miles and I have running it on 5-30 Castrol syntec blend with 4k OCI. I haven't had any problems and I think I am going to stick with this and not waste $$ on synthetics because these belns do just fine for highway mileage unless you want to keep your until 500K miles.

 

[Bob Miller]

Using the blotter test, I have found that my oils begin to show "rings" about 3000 miles. Thus the 3k OCI. On mostly Hiway trips, I might find the rings don't show for 4-4.5k miles.

The longest I've gone is 5k miles using a Fram X2 filter.

As for the oil, my 89 Honda Prelude was still not burning oil at 220,000 miles using Valvoline dino and NAPA filters with ~3k OCI.

I'll probably continue to use this combination in the new Corolla. I an somewhat skeptikal of the GF-4 oils as of yet.

 

[2019CRVlx]

I going with M1 in my Corolla just because I think it runs cleaner and won't sludge.

But I'm going with 5k OCIs.