1996 Tacoma buy

Agreed, it's the filter that you have to worry about. It can only hold so much dirt before it gets to the point where it's not filtering anything. So sounds like you used FRAM lol. Did you ever cut one open after 5K to see how dirty it was? I think I might do that sometime just for kicks and giggles.

 

I don't waste my money changing mobil 1 synthetic early. Religiously change at 7500 mile intervals. You saw my pic, have done this since truck was new.

 

Nope didn't care I grew up with cars that had the course in about 60K the oils were pretty much worthless and no matter what you did it still gunked up the engines and that was a 3,000 mile oil change. Now the oils are infinitely better and you just don't see that any more with modern engines. Even so call cheap filter are good enough for modern engines and oils. I have seen the photos of cut up filters but the bottom line nothing I get rid of has less than 200K on it and I have yet to lose an engine. On the 2011 I do splurge on the filter and use a Wicks (NAPA) more so than any other reason is because I’m not driving anywhere near the mileage I once did. Synthetic blend oil has it’s propose but not in 75% of the daily drivers and if you don’t change the oil at 10K you pretty much are throwing money away and not allowing the oils to do what they were intended to do and that is to suspend the crud in the oil.