Is It Too Late?

[racuda]

I only became "oil aware" a couple of months ago, after discovering this forum.

Prior to my enlightenment, I have been giving my 2000 Toyota Celica regular 7500 mile OCI's, as per the owners manual for my kind of driving (all highway, 40 mile trips). It now seems that this is at least 2500 miles too long. Also, I have been using Vavoline 5W 30 and (gasp) Fram filters.

To make matters worse, Walmart has been changing my oil for the entire 5 years that I've owned the car and they have been using the wrong Fram filter! They have been using the filter for the Celica GT instead of the GT-S which I have. The GT filter is 3/4" shorter.

Of course, I now plan to use Auto RX and switch to Mobil 1 and OEM filters (already purchased). I will do my own oil changes.

My car has 53,000 miles on it.

My question is: have I already done irreconcilable damage to my engine? Am I on the right path?

 

[BlazerLT]

No, no damge is done.

7500miles OCI is perfectly fine for highway driving.

Also, skip the Auto RX treatment, I doubt with 53,000miles you need it.

 

[97f150]

probably didnt do any damage. several people extend their ocis way beyond the reccommendation. as far as the shorter filter it would do the job just the same with maybe a little less filter media. dont know to much on the subject of filters. some one else will be along shortly and answer that. it shouldnt have done any damage though unless the bunch of wallys and wally world cross threaded it or something. besides the car is a toyota, it would have lasted forever even if you didnt change the oil just kidding

. really though you shouldnt have anything to worry about.

 

[JohnBrowning]

Racuda, You are probably fine! I will caution you though that a lot and I mean a lot of older Toyota 4 cylinders and V6's really did not do well on 7500 mile oil change intervals and cheap 5W30 dino oil! We have not heard any issues with the Celica's other then the High Output 1.8 so you are probably fine. It is a wise choice to do the Auto-Rx but you need to use dino oil for best results with Auto-Rx!!

Once you are done with the clean phase and rinse phase both done with dino oil then switch to the synthetic if you want too. After the rinse phase is over I would highly recomend that you only go to 5000 miles you first run on synthetic and do a UOA to see how the oil looks. An once of prevention is worth a pound of cure!

All of Toyota's newer I4,V6's and V8 have incredable UOA about 95% of the time reguardless of what oil they use and how long they leave it in.

 

[racuda]

Thanks for the words of encouragement!

Reading these forums can create paranoia sometimes. I read that a lot of people do their first oil change at 500 or 1000 miles (mine was at 7500). I also read that people don't like Vavoline and especially Fram. It made me think that the combination of all these sins would result in dire consequences.

The Celica is a secondary vehicle for me - a fun car to drive on the weekends. It is in perfect condition and I would like to keep it forever. With a great resource like BITOG, maybe that will be possible.