Do you guys go by the "maint reqd" light?

I understand this light just goes by 5000 mile intervals, which seems kind of frequent for a clean running engine with synthetic oil. My oil looks clean. I'm curious if I'd be the abusive truck parent if I put this off for a few K more miles.

 

Yes, I do 5w30 synth high mileage (and filter and drive shaft grease) every 5k miles. I have almost 200k miles, so rather safe than sorry.

 

Does your engine say it wants 0w-20 like mine? I'm old enough that 0w20 seems crazy thin, but I might go along with it this time.

 

Here we go

 

Send a batch of to Blackstone labs and see what they say.

 

I usually reset it when I change the oil but sometimes forget. Since I follow 6 months or 5k miles whichever comes first, and I never do more than 5k miles in 6 months, the light doesn’t come on unless I forgot to do a reset.

Many will say it’s a waste of money doing it too often. My plan, my opinion, my vehicle, my money to waste.

 

I do. I think most of us fit into one of the other conditions. Short trips, extreme weather temps, stop-and-go traffic, towing, or dusty conditions. Just temperature wise my current oil has seem -20* to 180*

 

I reset and ignore the light when it comes on. I do oil changes with full synthetic oil at 5K mile intervals on my vehicles, yes I could go to 7K-8K miles but 5K is a easy to remember number.

 

Yes, every 5K on my 2.7L four banger.

 

I don't go by the light because I always forgot to reset it, but I do change every 5k.

I do it more frequently if I've been doing lots of wheeling--ehich in my case typically means the California desert, so lots of dust.

 

Yay!

 

Yes: +- 5,000 miles by the light w/5w30 as spec'd for the V6. If it's in the middle of winter and time to do it, I take it to the place I bought it. They always try and talk me into the 0w20, but I won't do it: as I recall, the manual says nothing about 0w20 synthetic in the 4.0L.

 

I used to change the filter every time the light came on, 5000 miles. Every other time I changed the oil and filter. The oil was changed every 10,000 miles. I did this the 1st 9 years and 180,000 miles I drove the truck. At the time I was driving about 20K per year and the oil got changed about every 6 months.

Since 2016 the Tacoma is a 3rd vehicle and only sees about 10,000 miles per year. I do change the oil now at 5K, which works out to the same 6 months. It isn't just miles, but time.

BTW, 10,000 miles is actually conservative for most people. You could probably go longer, especially if you drive a lot. There are a couple of documented one-million-mile Tacoma's out there whose owners used 10,000-mile OCI.

 

No poll? This thread sucks.

 

Yup, every two times, I know it's time to change it

 

I look at it this way it gives me the chance to look every thing over, grease U joints etc. DIY is not expensive and in a hour or so your all set for another 5K.