Koz

http://priuschat.com/news/toyota-upp...-toyota-models

Koz

92 SC400

Probably because it is also saying they are going to change from traditional dino oil to a 0w-20 synthetic; that's probably the bigger factor here.

IS-SV

About time, like BMW, Mercedes, Porsche.

javyLSU

iTrader: (21)

It'll be nice to have factory backing for something I've been doing for years.

Javier

The G Man

Typical Toyota, always late to the game. Let someone else be the guinea pig. Flame suit on

Koz

Toyota and Honda may have needed to make some changes to sell more cars in Europe.

Koz

-J-P-L-

Toyota always "late to the game"? Yeah, because the Prius was a copy cat of everyone elses 50 mpg hybrid that had been out for years.

And it's about time Toyota caught up with everyone in terms of the recent quality improvements across the auto landscape. They certainly couldn't go on building unreliable crap.

PhilipMSPT

iTrader: (5)

Sort of true.

I don't know if you knew about the sludge issues that Toyota had in the early-mid 90's.

Partially because of it, it was necessary for Toyota to promote frequent oil change intervals (because most people procrastinate and push it) to prevent issues (moreso that what they had to deal with already). It didn't involve all cars, but you have to have uniformity within the brand.

No need for a flame suit. It's true. But it isn't the whole picture...

TRDFantasy

Typical comment . Just because Toyota's reliability and quality standards are above most other automakers, doesn't mean they're "late to the game", it means they take their time and have patience to make sure their quality goals are met.

vwynn

iTrader: (4)

hmm would older cars like mine benefit if we used 0w-20??

dunnojack

i've never used synthetic in my life.

but i know you can get a good deal at walmart for synthetic, and then bring the bottles to your dealer to fill up, saving some more money

DASHOCKER

iTrader: (2)

Does the Honda Insight ring a bell? Click that mouse

Agreed..

mmarshall

Those gel/sludge issues, as I understand it, were in the late 90's, not the early-mid 90's. They involved the 3.0L V6 (not the 3.0L straight-six), and were generally solved when the engine was enlarged to 3.3L.

Even in the 3.0L V6, If you changed the oil at decent intervals (say, every 3-5 months), you generally had little or no problem. The problem came because this engine, due to the design of its oil passages, was NOT forgiving of extended drain intervals, so, if you let it go to only once a year and 8000-10,000 miles like some people do, you would up with a block full of brown Jell-O and a seized-up motor. I've seen a number of ruined 3.0L bocks myself in the service departments.

There was a class-action suit on this matter, and Toyota came up with a settlement that gave owners a new or rebuilt engine if a proof-of-oil-change, with the correct oil/filter, could be shown at least once in the last 12 months. That, IMO was too lienient......once a year, IMO, is engine abuse on the part of the owners, but the company agreed to it.


The problem was not Toyota's recommended drain intervals. The problem was simply getting people off their a**es and getting the job done. That applies, no matter what the interval is.

Threxx

I've been using 5w-30 Mobil 1 full synthetic w/ Nippon Denso filter since oil change #1 in my wife's 05 4runner... 7500-8000 mile intervals, though.

It's worth noting that they seemingly never fully fixed the sludge issue in the old 3.0/3.3L V6s... if owners tried to run synthetic oil for 10k miles in those engines they might have been asking for trouble. So while some may say they're late to the game, I might say they really weren't capable of extending their intervals until they got rid of that problematic engine which I think was last to be seen in the recently discontinued previous gen RX450h.

TRDFantasy

You need to work on your research a bit more. The Prius came to market initially in Japan in 1997, and that was years before the Insight, which only came to market in 1999. The Prius was the first mass-produced hybrid.

Enthusiasts are grossly misinformed on this because lazy automotive media personnel always talk about how the Insight came out a few months before the Prius *in the US*, but they almost never mention when the Prius originally debuted.