Toilet thoughts about incremental oil changes

Was pondering about Fumoto valves while on the throne, and the thought occurred to me:

Assuming I had one of these valves(which I don’t and don’t really plan to), I wonder if there’d be any benefit to switching to incremental oil changes.

I’ll admit it does seem appealing. Since the valve would make it easier to drain a specified amount of oil, one could theoretically drain and replace a quart every thousand miles (or two quarts every couple thou, etc) and change the filter every 5k ish.

This would keep the oil more continuously refreshed over time, presumably allowing increased lubricity, refreshed detergents, and less sediment collecting in the pan between drainsI just wonder if it’d be worth the effort in reality. Assuming you had proper skid plates to protect the valve and whatnot of course.

I certainly wouldn’t wanna bother in a car that I’d have to jack up or get on a lift to access the drain every thousand miles. But since it’d take 30sec to reach under the truck and flip a valve on and off it wouldn’t be much of a pain.

Again, just a thought exercise and I’m curious what any resident lubrication experts may have to say.

 

The new oil wouldnt help as you already have fuel and debris in the old oil which will intermix. Changing ALL your oil, you still have residual debris and fuel but way less concentrates. You would use MORE oil swapping out one quart at a time in the long run for the same "clean" oil you would get from a complete change as you would have to remove and add a quart more often to get the same results. Do you want the fluid dilution formula?

 

Interesting idea, but maybe another way to think of it logically is you are adding a quart of fresh new oil to 6.5 qts (2.L 4-cyl) of dirty contaminated oil. Not sure what you really gain in that scenario. YMMV

 

I guess my thought was that over the course of 5k miles and 5 1qt drain-and-top-ups, I’ll have cycled (almost) the full capacity of oil through the engine(mine holds 5.5qt). Of course starting with a fresh fill and not just swapping 1qt of already worn-out oil.

So instead of driving the last thousand miles of a normal OCI on worn out oil with depleted detergents, I’ll have refreshed 20% of the oil each previous 1k.

Not saying my proposed method is objectively better, but I feel that could be more beneficial to the engine, keeping things substantially cleaner continuously, at the cost of losing the “warm and fuzzy” feeling of draining out all the dark oil and refilling with new. Everything just stays at a relatively constant level of “oil life remaining”

Worth taking a vehicle to a shop every 1k miles? HELL no. But for a DIYer who doesn’t mind spending 90seconds every few weeks to reach under the truck and open a ball valve, then dump a quart in the filler? *shrugs*

 

Oil change every 5k is already conservative, as the manual says to change every 10k in normal use. Spend the money on other things that'll prolong the life of your truck: rust protection, rodent protection, UV protection, vandalism/theft deterrence...

There's a saying in commercial aviation: "50% of maintenance is caused by maintenance". Drain and fill every 1000 miles, sooner or later the statistics will catch up with you and do more harm than good: open the wrong drain plug by mistake, round off a bolt, forget to tighten fill cap, forget to top up the oil, etc.

 

If I have to climb under to change the filter at 5k, it doesn’t seem to be much of a time/trouble saver. By the time I do that, I’ve drained the oil.

 

Ah, see, I'm spoiled. The filter is right up top for me lol. So even a normal full oil change takes all of 7 minutes start-finish when I'm taking my time.

Never intended any of this to be a time- or trouble-saver though. Just debating the potential benefits of having an overall fresher mix of oil in the engine at any given time, if one happened to already have a drain valve to make the precise draining part super easy(doesn't work nearly as well with a plug bolt)

My '15 1GR specifies 5k intervals as it runs 5w30. AFAIK just the 0w20 engines were changed to 10k intervals. But your points are totally valid. More mx does inherently mean more chances to miss a step and/or bung something up.

This entire brainstorm hinges on the relative ease brought on by the drain valve. I'd never even consider trying to open a normal drain plug, attempting to catch exactly a quart, and closing it before making a massive mess. I'd just use the valve as a little faucet right into a bottle.

But brainstorming further, i do suppose it opens up the possibility of extra wear on said drain valve, leading to a potential leak down the road. And every drain leak is potentially catastrophic, whether on on 1GR-FE or IO-470 lol

 

sounds like OP smoked a blunt of asbestos dipped in toluene

 

It’s a Toyota, not a Ferrari….it will run on crude oil if it had to.

 

Completely agree that a full drain and fill results in MUCH cleaner oil, for a while.

I was mostly debating the pros and cons of two scenarios:

Scenario A, normal OCI: Fill with fresh oil, run it for 5k miles, drain all the oil and fill with new. This results in (and i'm generalizing here) the first 2500 of those miles being driven with nice clean oil. The oil only degrades over time though, and the last 2500 miles see much dirtier oil with all the detergents and additives depleted.

Scenario B, modified OCI: NEVERMIND

At this point I had done some math, and had a huge table typed up with expected dilution and average age of the homogenized oil in the engine after each incremental fill-up, using weighted averages. It looked real promising at first, but the more I number-crunched, the averages stabilized at a much higher mileage than I originally thought. I figured it'd even out around 2500-3000, but it got to almost 4000 and still inching up before I admitted that I was wrong and that this was a stupid idea. Lots of extra work just to ride around with 4000ish-mile oil in the pan at all times lol.

....ON SECOND THOUGHT...here's the numbers I came up with anyway. This is for draining and filling 1qt in my 5.5qt engine every 1000miles

1000 mile oil top-up: average age of each molecule of oil in the engine is 820miles
2000mile top-up:1492 miles
3000mile top-up:2043 miles
4000mile top-up: 2495 miles
5000mile top-up:2895 miles
6000mile top-up: 3169 miles
7000mile top-up: 3418 miles
8000mile top-up: 3622 miles
9000mile top-up: 3790 miles

So still pretty interesting and may be beneficial to those with higher OCIs. But I like sticking with my 5k intervals. Gives me the wiggle room to extend them now and then if needed/forgotten.

The thought exercise was fun though! Thanks for the input!

 

I wonder if these folks worry about OCI?

 

Hey, most great scientists and innovators are regarded as batshit crazy till they end up right lol.

Lol. I know I CAN probably beat it to hell and still maybe have it last a while. But I'm hoping to squeeze every last bit of life out of it that I can.

 

geniuses are 1% of the population and don’t waste their time on stupid shit.
Dumb as a brick is over 50% of population and waste their time on stupid shit. Like this.

I was at Costco food court eating a slice of pizza a table next to a guy with Down syndrome. I overheard his intelligent conversation.

your original post is about 10 times worse.

if I said what you said at a regular job I’d be jumped by 30 people and fired within an hour.

 

But in this example, youre not adding the dilution from previous oil, and the intermixing of new/old oil so the weighted averages would actually increase from those numbers

 

And here I thought you might have something useful or funny to add to the conversation. Guess you're among the 50% who likes wasting their time on being a derogatory asshole to strangers on the internet. Jesus dude, that was uncalled for. And I'm the one smoking toluene?
How bout you fuck right off and be an angry little cunt somewhere else, the adults are talking.

I basically averaged out the mileage in each "batch" and weighted-averaged the old and new oil. Not super precise calculations but either way it seems I overestimated how effective it is to add 1qt of fresh oil to 4.5 remaining quarts in the engine, now that I've done some math lol.

 

Perhaps it replaces not having reading material in the bathroom?

 

Why not make it even easier.

Get yourself a vacuum extractor.

Pull a quart out and never get a drop of oil on you.

Top off and go!