black oil and soot question please help!

Hello
I have a 96 4 cyl 4x4 tacoma.
It runs perfect and has no problems that I have noticed.
Except that I have just seen that I have some black soot around the outer edge of my tail pipe. I never see any black or gray smoke coming from the exhaust while running or even while it is being started. I then checked my oil and it is very black and the dip stick has some caked on oil on the tip. I had my oil changed 3000 mile ago. The oil level is right were it should be it is not low at all. I have not noticed any loss in power or loss in gas milage. One problem is I never change my own oil so i am not sure how long the dip stick has looked like this.
I try to change the oil every 3000 miles but sometimes I do go over that and change it at 5-6 thousand miles

The truck has 107,000 miles on it
Do you think this is anything I need to worry too much about?
Should i switch to a synthetic oil like castrol gtx?

any advice or help would be great.
Thanks

 

It's funny you mention short trips.
I only use this truck to go back and forth to work which is a very short trip of about 12 minutes. So I only drive it about 30 mins a day. and only get it up to 55-60 mph for about 3 minutes of that.
So you think that could be the cause of the black soot?

 

well thats good news
What do you think about the oil and the dipstick?
Should I switch to a different oil like gtx?

 

Which is exactly why people should change their own oil. Put those high school kids out of business.

 

My thoughts EXACTLY!!!!!

His oil could be in there for 6-10K miles a time.

Another reason to change your own oil!! Or atleast check the oil level & color immediately before & after its been changed.

 

I sit in the car while they change the oil and I did see them pupme new oil into it. I am just wondering if they might not have changed my oil filter. Do you think a flush would help. If so what have you guys used to flush your engines? Do you think switching to a synthetic oil like gtx would be a good idea. I was thinking of changing the oil and then changing it again after a thousand miles just to help clean out the sludge. Do you think this will help?

 

Although cleaning out the sludge (flush) might seem like a good idea ... with that many miles, you could actually create more problems. Hard to explain, but with piston rings/seals and all that other stuff that's been running WITH that sludge in there..... If you remove the sludge, you could create a poor running engine because things aren't seated properly.