How many miles between oil changes?

I seem to end up changing based on days, not miles. My truck isn't a daily driver, so if I change spring and fall I'm under 5k miles.

 

When I bought my 2016, I downloaded the Tacoma Warranty and Maintenance Guide online as a PDF. Tells you exactly what they are supposedly doing at every 5k mile increment. According to that, it says oil change every 10K miles so that is what I have always done with the recommended synthetic. Never given me any problems and it is my daily driver as well as my adventure vehicle. Even got free oil changes for life, up to 3 per year, when I bought out my lease.

 

I just realized this is a Gen 2 forum, please ignore me lol.

 

I've been changing mine at 10K for 14 years and 220,000 miles. I've never added oil between oil changes. There are guys who have put 900,000 miles on Tacoma's with 10K mile oil change intervals.

 

Run synthetic every 10k miles. Just reset the light once at 5k and keep diving until it comes back in again.

 

10k miles. Filter change at 5k, then just top it off if needed.

 

Because maintenance items are laid out on a schedule of 5k increments.

It's not an 'oil change' light. It's just triggered by 5k miles since it's last reset. It's likely time for 'something' in the schedule to be attended to.

If you want to follow Toyota's recommendations, look at the service schedule in the back of your owners manual. If you don't have a manual, a free PDF version of all the manuals your truck originally came with are available on Toyota's website.

If you are smarter than Toyota engineers regarding basic maintenance, like a lot of folks here apparently are, do whatever you want to.

 

I do very short commute, my job is 5 miles of where i live, so 10 miles a day on 2 short trip. Usualy if i don't have any shopping to do my truck run maybe 50-60 miles per week. In the summer it's ok the truck and transmission can reach operating temp but in the cold i found out that the condensation form sludge under the oil cap very easely and the trans stay around 30-40c because the torque converter lock and don't generate much heat.

Short commute is a form of severe service, i always change the oil and the filter every 3k miles on all my vehicule and usualy this happen every 6 month, so 2 oil change per year (before winter and before summer).

My truck was serviced all his past life at the dealer and they used the conventional 5w-30 (dino oil) @5k miles for 130k miles. I did the switch when i got it with a synthetic blend and that started to clean the inside, i did another change 1k miles after that, it was pretty dark and started using Amsoil OE 5w-30. I did another change 3 week ago @2k miles and the oil was better looking but i still had some "gunk" and particle stuck in the oil filter so it's was still cleaning old wear debris and stuff. For now i will wait the 3k miles mark to change the oil and to see how this truck behave in the winter, i have in hand a oil test kit to see how the engine health going when the oil change happen.

I use the OEM filter

$55 90915-YZZD3 Oil Filter 1 Case (QTY 10)

90915-YZZD3 with Amsoil OE 5w-30 OEFQTC-EA. I usualy save around 25-35$ if i do the oil change myself.

This synthetic oil seem to intensify the ticking noise from the valve train and it seem many people have the same result when switching from dino to some other brand of synth oil, after 7 month of owning the truck i can say the taco tick still bother me and the cold weather seem to give some noise with the fuel injector. I remember a quote somewhere saying that it's better to have a 1gr-fe who sound broken/diesel-ish for 400k miles than a good sounding engine who last 100k miles.

I have some pic i took when i did an inspection of the timing chain tensioner and the pickup tube to see how bad was the gunk when i did my last oil change. I found nothing in the sump pan and you can see even with regular oil change every 5k miles for 9 year that the truck have some gunk sticking inside and a gold varnish looking. At the next fluid/coolant refresh (in 3 year) i will reopen the sump pan and see how this cleaned up.

 

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/used-oil-analysis-reports-2nd-generation-tacoma.182294/page-8

I use the Wix kits from Amazon. I buy them in pairs when the price drops down to about twelve bucks. Not as feature laden as Blackstone but the TBN is included in the charge.

 

5-8K, at least semi-synthetic. Full synth you can go up to 10K/annually, whichever comes first. Shit these aren't even turbocharged and everyone acting like it's sludge at 5.1k

 

When I bought my '15, the dealership offered me a maintenance package. I was to bring it in every 5K miles, and they would (his words) "we'll change the oil every odd # time, and rotate the tires every even # time you come in" . And I said "so you're going to change the oil every 10K miles?........................................no thanks, I'll take care of it."

I know synthetic CAN go 10K, but not in my truck. Oil's cheap, engines aren't. But to each their own.

 

Exactly.

 

It’s an oil thread. Nobody cares what year your truck is for these.

 

Appreciate it. I am certainly not enough of a mechanic to know whether the different engines in the two generations have different oil requirements. Trying to avoid being that guy.

 

I did not read any of the other replies.
Mostly for the reason that “ I am going to do, what I want, with my truck”

I go 5K between changes with standard conventional oil.

I have never used synthetic. Is it better for the truck? Maybe.
Will the engine in my truck last longer if I changed it more frequently or used synthetic? I’ll never know.

 

Na it’s all the same. Different filter type and location but everything else is the same. Toyota has there recommendation. People on here have a bunch of different ones. The most common answer here is 5k with synthetic. I think mobile 1 is probably the most popular brand but that’s all personal preference. There are probably 20 other threads on this same topic. Dudes on TW love talking about oil.

 

As I'm sure others have said (too lazy to read all comments) :
5k miles between oil changes
10k between oil filter changes (every other oil change)
10k miles between tire rotations.

If ya really wanna know -- change it at 5k and save a sample to send into Blackstone-labs.com for $30.
They can tell you if you could go further based on oil/car/driving habits, along with tons of other vehicle fluids tests.
I'm thinking of having all my fluids tested since my truck is nearing 100K.

 

why change the filter every other time? It’s the cheapest part of an oil change with OEM filters running less than $5. New oil and used filter seems like a bit of a waste.

 

I was wondering the same thing. I've heard of people running the oil long at say - 10k OCI - and then swapping out the filter at 5k. Never the other way around

 

It's mostly just how I've done oil changes on everything I own with an engine. I worked as a lube tech in HS for a Toyota dealer and that's what the techs told me to do/ what they do on their personal cars.
A filter won't "filter less" dirt and metal if it's used with new oil - the only worry is if it is not changed for a VERY long time to the point where it restricts flow and starves the engine of oil, or deteriorates so that it no longer filters out contaminants. Neither of which I have found to be a problem with running filters for 10k miles. It saves me a few bucks and a few minutes, as I choose to buy larger oil filters for my truck that allow me to put ~6 quarts in over the normal 5-5.5 quarts.

You're right though, it wouldn't hurt to change them every time too.