I am very surprised Toyota doesn't have something like GM's OLM. It's very sophisticated-software wise.
What Engine hours do we think is good for an oil change interval?
- Thread starter Ang
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Youtube videos have zero credibility with me - sorry. You can reference something else and I will be happy to look at it.
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OVERKILL
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Ahhhh, OK, yeah, that's a decent rule of thumb if you don't have an iOLM which takes other operating factors into consideration.
Do you have the 3? That's how I'll be monitoring. I have already asked them to add Hour tracking as they added another feature for me but they don't seem to want to. My plan is to just write down the tank hours at every fill-up, and I guess I'll also track gallons this time to see what makes more sense to go off of.
I get about 4100 with this, the same thing I'm doing already. But if I find that I have extra idling hours on an interval I'd like to know at what point I should just change it early.@Ang
A SouthWest Research Institute (SWRI) lube analysis tech came up with the following formula for OCI:
sump capacity in quarts, times 200, divided by 4, equals gallons, times the vehicles mpg = OCI in miles.
Do a search here at BITOG using SWRI.
Based on my extensive UOA reports collected on each of my vehicles, this formula gives me a good baseline for each.
My vehicles get synthetic oil, but driving conditions like: mostly hwy, mostly short tripped, towing, etc. should be taken into consideration.
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most scanners have data recording. you can see how much time each trip was driving or idling. i have the cheap obd bluetooth. connecting to my phone. it might be simpler to write down on paper too n forget about scanner.
Yes, the smart monitors can account for coolant temp, air temp, and such and they're more sophisticated. While fuel consumption is a good proxy because most fast-degradation conditions are also low-mpg conditions, it's still a bit less sophisticated.
The 200x rule is a convenient and handy proxy if you have nothing more sophisticated than the even-cruder
"every X miles" or "every X hours"-- but it's only one step better than those. It's not a replacement for a well-tuned OLM running an actual algorithm.
That said, I followed the OLM on my old Odyssey-which is an algorithm like the GM setup-- and got a top end covered in varnish even with group III or better oils used the entire time. So maybe the 200x is rule is sometimes better, depending on how it's tuned.
Applying the 200x rule to my van would have had me changing around 5k mile OCI anyway (on average) or less, when the OLM generally had me 6k-9k depending on town vs highway usage.
As always YMMV.
If the car records the hours sure. The average car does not have an hour meter, that's usually a truck thing, and we want a simple reading not going through obdii to get it.
So after all of this I don't think we still have a clear answer on How many Hours, And How many gallons of fuel burned would be the right number if met before the 4000 miles/10 Months, Just a few opinions on what some people do. Is there any testing data that we can use to find a good number?
By that it would be 200 hours. I suppose I would agree that makes sense as a max hours as 4000 miles could average to almost 150 miles. 150-200 hours / 4000 miles / 10 months Whichever comes first. And it looks like 4000 miles might take me 250 gallons of gas, probably no way to hit that without first hitting hours before miles.
For my daily I use whatever is cheap other than super tech Kirkland, typically Pennzoil Castrol e.t.c right now I've been doing Valvoline Restore and Protect. But usually for everything else aside from rebates the supertech Kirkland is cheapest and good enough.
I know Valvoline Restore and Protect wants some amount of a shorter life, not sure how much other than the ridiculous 3 months, I did 4100 miles unknown hours on the last change which was my first Valvoline Restore and Protect. It's a Honda the oil is always still transparent when it's done, it's not like it gets black in 100 miles like most brands so it wasn't super dirty to need a super short change.
