Toyota dealer changes over to Castrol synthetic blend

[Hirev]

A family member always get her oil changed every 5K miles at a local Toyota dealership. She has been doing business there many years. All of a sudden they raise there oil change prices. Stating they changed over from Castrol GTX to the more expensive higher quality Castrol Synthetic Blend because of some issues they had with previous oil. My first thought was Toyota sludge motors.

Question is do you think Castrol Synthetic Blend will help the situation any over GTX regarding some of Toyotas sludge motors?

 

[JHZR2]

GTX is supposedly already one of the more stable dino oils, with sme of the better VIIs...

the blend will add minimal improvement, IMO. What are we working with? 10%, 15% PAO or ester in there? well maybe if youre lucky, there will be a 10-15% reduction in sludging. To me, this means there will still be sludge.

However for the rest of the users, Id venture to guess that it will give them a litttle bit larger window of error and protection for when they dont change their oil on time.

Except for owners being cheap, and wanting maintenance at bottom bargain basement prices (which usually isnt as muc of an issue if theyre going to the dealer anyway) it really isnt a bad thing theyre doing.

JMH

 

[eljefino]

Not a bad thing but I wonder what sort of kickbacks or sweetheart deals the dealer might be getting? Castrol synblend is not a bulk oil I've seen promoted much. Conocophilips seems a bigger player in that game with the great and reasonably priced motorcraft/tropartic blends.

I would not be suprised if they made this the "standard" oil change then came out with a "value" change in a few months. By default, people would get stuck with the more expensive standard change.