O.K. to use Mobil 1 ESP X2 0W20 in Toyota Tacoma?

I own a Toyota and I know they spec ILSAC GF-5 for there 0w20. The ESP X2 does not carry that spec, which is why it wasn't listed. Your right it carries a lot of specs. for European vehicles as well as the new diesel option for GM's half ton pickup trucks. Why not use Mobil 1 EP? That would be more identical to TGMO than ESP X2.
Just a little follow up.

I e-mailed Exxon/Mobil. My question, and their response are as follows:

Question: I'm very interested in your Mobil 1 ESP X2 0W-20 motor oil, and I see that it is listed as one of the recommended oils, according to your website. I own a 2019 Toyota Tacoma SR5 with the 3.5L, V-6 motor. My owners manual clearly states "Oil grade: ILSAC GF-5 multigrade engine oil." Does your Mobil 1 ESP X2 0W-20 motor oil meet this specification? Do you have any documentation, such as a Product Data Sheet, that illustrates this?

Response:
Thanks for writing to us. We cover the GM DexosD spec, VW 508 00 and VW 509 00 specs, Porsche C20 spec, Mercedes MB 229.71 spec, and Jaguar/Land Rover STJLR .51.5122 and STJLR.03.5006 specs with Mobil 1 ESP X2 0W-20. https://www.mobil.com/en/lubricants...s/our-products/products/mobil-1-esp-x2-0w-20/

For this particular niche market product, meeting these OEM criteria was more important than meeting ILSAC criteria. Sometimes two criteria are mutually exclusive. If this were not the case, all OEMs would be satisfied with third party certifications and would not waste time and money developing and certifying to their own in-house specifications. It's definitely made the motor oil aisle at the store more complicated than it was 40 years ago.

He then followed up and said, "I see I trimmed out part of your question/answer in my editing process. If Toyota calls for a GF-5 rated oil in the manual, this will not be a suitable product. The majority of our 0W-20 oils, however, cover the now obsolete GF-5 and the newer GF-6A specs from ILSAC. The good news is, those oils are also a lot easier to find, while people who NEED to meet one of the OEM specs on the Mobil 1 ESP subfamily of oils have to work a little harder to get them, as they are rare by comparison."



Ed
 
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Thumbs nose at Toyota/Mobil/API/Ilsac

If I were to use a 0w20 oil, I would definitely stick with the 508/C20/DexosD/STJLR/MB oils and use the ESPx2.

Any Toyota in this driveway calling for 0w20 or 5w20 just get any full synthetic 5w30, since I operate under maddening traffic merging highway speeds and extreme loads caused by the drivethru
An oil with a higher viscosity (one with a higher value) may be better suited if the vehicle is operated at high speeds, or under extreme load conditions.
 
Just a little follow up.

I e-mailed Exxon/Mobil. My question, and their response are as follows:

Question: I'm very interested in your Mobil 1 ESP X2 0W-20 motor oil, and I see that it is listed as one of the recommended oils, according to your website. I own a 2019 Toyota Tacoma SR5 with the 3.5L, V-6 motor. My owners manual clearly states "Oil grade: ILSAC GF-5 multigrade engine oil." Does your Mobil 1 ESP X2 0W-20 motor oil meet this specification? Do you have any documentation, such as a Product Data Sheet, that illustrates this?

Response:
Thanks for writing to us. We cover the GM DexosD spec, VW 508 00 and VW 509 00 specs, Porsche C20 spec, Mercedes MB 229.71 spec, and Jaguar/Land Rover STJLR .51.5122 and STJLR.03.5006 specs with Mobil 1 ESP X2 0W-20. https://www.mobil.com/en/lubricants...s/our-products/products/mobil-1-esp-x2-0w-20/

For this particular niche market product, meeting these OEM criteria was more important than meeting ILSAC criteria. Sometimes two criteria are mutually exclusive. If this were not the case, all OEMs would be satisfied with third party certifications and would not waste time and money developing and certifying to their own in-house specifications. It's definitely made the motor oil aisle at the store more complicated than it was 40 years ago.

He then followed up and said, "I see I trimmed out part of your question/answer in my editing process. If Toyota calls for a GF-5 rated oil in the manual, this will not be a suitable product. The majority of our 0W-20 oils, however, cover the now obsolete GF-5 and the newer GF-6A specs from ILSAC. The good news is, those oils are also a lot easier to find, while people who NEED to meet one of the OEM specs on the Mobil 1 ESP subfamily of oils have to work a little harder to get them, as they are rare by comparison."



Ed
I was confused as some claimed ESP X2 was listed and some was not listed. So I did my own Mobil search for your vehicle and yes, Mobil did indeed list ESP X2. Hence, the confusion. You did the right thing to write to Exxonmobil. Obviously, Ed from Mobil has made the same conclusion from what I learned about ESP X2, which shows that Mobil lubricant match needs a fix. I was wondering what you are planning to do. If it were me and in wanting to go different than the recommendation, I would sooner go with a higher viscosity oil with a GF-5 spec. over paying more for ESP X2. The reason being is I know that engine is not designed as a high performance engine, like what ESP X2 were made for. I just don't see the need to spend more money over EP. It would be like buying someone expensive fine wine and they wouldn't appreciate it.
 
If you're interested, here's a follow up message I received from the Exxon/Mobil help desk...

..."
I would say there are two basic categories of oil specifications out there today. On the one hand, we have third party specs from groups like API (American Petroleum Institute), JASO (Japanese Automotive Standards Organization, and ACEA (I usually call it "French API" because I can't pronounce it). ILSAC, the "International Lubricant Standardization and Approval Committee" is a spin off organization of combined US and Japanese origin founded in the early 1990's. I call them third party organizations because they don't make oil, and they don't build engines. Instead they provide sets of specifications and criteria to give the automotive and lubricants industries a common language. SAE, the Society of Automotive Engineers does something similar with the SAE viscosity grading scale, but the SAE scale measures flow rate behaviors, not chemistry. API, ILSAC, JASO, and ACEA specs can involve tests of chemistry (limiting phosphorus content for example) as well as measurable statistics such as durability, lubricity, and evaporative loss.

On the other hand, we have OEM specs. Companies like GM, Ford, Fiat/Chrysler, Mercedes, Porsche, etc. have all jumped on this bandwagon that feels "We know our engines better than these third party agencies, so we produce our own specific criteria based on what we know about how we design and build our own engines." It winds up meaning specs from two or three companies might actually have enough overlap that they all approve the same oil(s) on everything, or only on some engine models, or they might disagree on just enough that an oil can only satisfy one criteria or the other but not both.

So far, it is very rare to see any of the Asian sourced brands calling for a factory spec. In most cases, they build engines with characteristics offering a lot of flexibility in oil choices. Where I might only have a single oil I can recommend for a Volkswagen, I'll have 7 or more I can recommend in a Honda, and it's the same story for Toyota, and if both models call for 0W-20 then a family with both Toyota, Honda, Subaru, Nissan, etc. can get away with just one product if they pick a favorite, but they also have a wide range of choices if one family member drives 3000 miles a year while another drives 13,000. For a very long time the Asian brands were all happy with API certifications, and then progressed to API or ILSAC (there's a lot of overlap anyway) and it seems relatively recent that I see some but not all models calling for strictly ILSAC specs. Toyota, for example, brought us the first two models in the US calling for 0W-16 a couple of years ago, and they were focused on oils meeting the API SN specification with the "RC" Resource Conserving tag-along spec on top of that. They don't all necessarily make it clear why they chose spec A over spec B, though.

I mentioned that it's a lot more complicated than it was 40 years ago because back then, we really just had API specs. A do-it-yourself consumer with a small family fleet really didn't have to do much but choose their brand. The guy with a small 2 bay oil change shop could keep 4 oils on hand and cover everyone who walked into his shop, including commercial truck drivers. Today they've got to make room for two or three times as many products. Without the variety they risk turning away a customer or worse yet, installing the wrong oil, ruining a motor, and voiding a customer's new vehicle warranty. It's not always about the motor, either. I've lost count over the past 5 years of how many people with motorhomes built on a Mercedes Sprinter chassis with the BlueTec diesel engines have chosen he wrong diesel lubricant and spent upwards of $4000 repairing emissions equipment while the engines were just fine."...


Ed
 
If you're interested, here's a follow up message I received from the Exxon/Mobil help desk...

..."
I would say there are two basic categories of oil specifications out there today. On the one hand, we have third party specs from groups like API (American Petroleum Institute), JASO (Japanese Automotive Standards Organization, and ACEA (I usually call it "French API" because I can't pronounce it). ILSAC, the "International Lubricant Standardization and Approval Committee" is a spin off organization of combined US and Japanese origin founded in the early 1990's. I call them third party organizations because they don't make oil, and they don't build engines. Instead they provide sets of specifications and criteria to give the automotive and lubricants industries a common language. SAE, the Society of Automotive Engineers does something similar with the SAE viscosity grading scale, but the SAE scale measures flow rate behaviors, not chemistry. API, ILSAC, JASO, and ACEA specs can involve tests of chemistry (limiting phosphorus content for example) as well as measurable statistics such as durability, lubricity, and evaporative loss.

On the other hand, we have OEM specs. Companies like GM, Ford, Fiat/Chrysler, Mercedes, Porsche, etc. have all jumped on this bandwagon that feels "We know our engines better than these third party agencies, so we produce our own specific criteria based on what we know about how we design and build our own engines." It winds up meaning specs from two or three companies might actually have enough overlap that they all approve the same oil(s) on everything, or only on some engine models, or they might disagree on just enough that an oil can only satisfy one criteria or the other but not both.

So far, it is very rare to see any of the Asian sourced brands calling for a factory spec. In most cases, they build engines with characteristics offering a lot of flexibility in oil choices. Where I might only have a single oil I can recommend for a Volkswagen, I'll have 7 or more I can recommend in a Honda, and it's the same story for Toyota, and if both models call for 0W-20 then a family with both Toyota, Honda, Subaru, Nissan, etc. can get away with just one product if they pick a favorite, but they also have a wide range of choices if one family member drives 3000 miles a year while another drives 13,000. For a very long time the Asian brands were all happy with API certifications, and then progressed to API or ILSAC (there's a lot of overlap anyway) and it seems relatively recent that I see some but not all models calling for strictly ILSAC specs. Toyota, for example, brought us the first two models in the US calling for 0W-16 a couple of years ago, and they were focused on oils meeting the API SN specification with the "RC" Resource Conserving tag-along spec on top of that. They don't all necessarily make it clear why they chose spec A over spec B, though.

I mentioned that it's a lot more complicated than it was 40 years ago because back then, we really just had API specs. A do-it-yourself consumer with a small family fleet really didn't have to do much but choose their brand. The guy with a small 2 bay oil change shop could keep 4 oils on hand and cover everyone who walked into his shop, including commercial truck drivers. Today they've got to make room for two or three times as many products. Without the variety they risk turning away a customer or worse yet, installing the wrong oil, ruining a motor, and voiding a customer's new vehicle warranty. It's not always about the motor, either. I've lost count over the past 5 years of how many people with motorhomes built on a Mercedes Sprinter chassis with the BlueTec diesel engines have chosen he wrong diesel lubricant and spent upwards of $4000 repairing emissions equipment while the engines were just fine."...


Ed
Wow, that is a nice amount of information out of a help desk where you usually can expect getting canned answers. That is one of the reasons that I like Asian brands for, is like Ed said, they are the least fussiest with what oil they spec. You have a lot of options to shop for oil. While American brands do have there own OEM specs, sourcing there oil is about the same, except GM's DEXOS, where the cheapest conventional oil won't have that spec. But you still got a lot of options with fill synthetic that if you watch for deals, you can get your oil cheap. I like to brag to the people with European cars that I changed my RAV4's oil for $15 and it is good for 10,000 miles, something they would be hard pressed to do, especially if they have a diesel. Personally, I really don't know why someone would spend more money on an oil that doesn't meet specs. Now, if you do your research into what would go wrong if you used something else, that is fine. The problem in doing your own research is the automotive manufacturer's usually refuse to answer your questions into why not, claiming it is proprietary. Then you go on your own haunch. So it could be, nothing will go wrong using EXP X2. If it makes you feel better, go ahead and use it.
I had my own experience with GM on my own research. When I had an 03 Chevy Blazer, E-15 came available to buy in our area. The owners manual was vague on that issue(it was written before that was an issue) and EPA says I could use. I contacted GM regarding use of E-15 and they just said, not an approved fuel and therefore it could cause damage. I pressed into then what could go wrong and they claimed it was all proprietary. I fueled the vehicle up with E-15 and I couldn't tell a difference. I spoke with a few mechanics about this, to see if there something I could be missing. The general question among them was, "Is your check engine light coming on?" So it was obvious my Blazer's ECM was able to adjust to use E-15, but didn't keep it long enough if any long term damage would occur.
 
Check out M1 Extended Performance 5w-20. It's a heavy 20. Scores a 9 at 100° C
I like your suggestion because a 5W-20 wont have much viscosity modifying polymer additives, and should also have pretty low Noack as well.

Guess it depends how he plans on driving it; I think a 5W-20 would be a good choice if he were in a northern state...but hes in California. So, probably a good chance that he won’t see a lot of sub-freezing cold starts.

In fact, depending on what area of CA, he very well may see lots of hot weather.

Therefore, I’d be more likely to suggest the M1-EP 10W-30 instead...which ive used for years in my 2007 Tacoma 4.0...and will probably also try in my wife’s 4Runner 4.0 that she just got.
 
Castrol Edge EP or Mobil1 EP If I owned that Toyota and wanted to stick to an extended drain 0W-20 motor oil.
 
I know some people use the cheapest, bargain-basement oil that meets their vehicle needs, but I'm not one of those people. For *me*, I am much more comfortable buying an oil that *I* think is a high quality product, even if it's 2X, 3X, etc., the price of bargain-basement stuff.

*I* think "you get what you pay for".

Ed
With what you said here, I think you should just keep running the TGMO then. It is a stout oil and I don't think the Mobil product you're looking at offers anything that is significantly better.
 
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