I have certain thoughts on this, what do you all think?

 

I didn't watch the entire vid what caused the severe cylinder bore and piston wear marks? Could say seized oil control rings but the 1ZZ-FE had ring lands getting filled with carbon and the cylinder walls didn't wear like that. In fact drill bigger holes in the oil control land slap in some new rings and the engine was good to go.

 

My vote/theory based on what I have also seen is this is XX-20 weight oil combined with DI, 10k oil changes, and the resulting fuel dilution killing an engine that was designed to run on XX-30 according to internal clearance specs. Very strange that it is starting to be seen in Toyotas though since this is normally a Honda problem

 

Doesn't he claim this issue is in a narrow year range? Fuel dilution makes sense.

 

He does but I am seeing complaints of any of the DI V6s on thin oil, interestingly the older Lexus engines were all XX-30 and shorter change intervals.

 

I'm starting to appreciate what you've been saying for awhile now, German auto makers are making more and more reliable engines Toyota is going in the opposite direction. 10 years ago it was unthinkable for Toyota engines to be blowing up in numbers even if they had spotty maintenance. Now with good maintenance they are failing. And Toyota is gaslighting us as to why. I have a neighbour with a V8 Tundra (landscape company) he was considering getting a new one I talked him out of that quickly.

 

I think they figured out the same thing BMW did, just keep the cars reliable long enough with the minimum amount of trips to the dealer for maintenance, so to not discourage the customer from leasing from them again. Boom! You have a life long subscription model.

 

i'm likely late to the game but i've recently been watching 0W-20 vs 5W-30 videos, since i've been running the factory recommended 0W-20 on my 2015 sienna (port injected, engine prior to the one on this thread which is both port and DI).

after what i've learned via those videos (not the AI generated ones), video above, and now striker's take on it all, i'm heavily leaning towards going to 5W-30 next!

 

I read that only US models require the 0w-20 while the rest of the world (the same engine) runs a little heavier oil. I believe the water like oil is used to maximize fuel efficiency.

I don't know if I will go thicker oil, but no way in hell am I going to follow Toyota's recommendation of 10,000 mile oil changes. Absolutely not.

I bought my ES 350 brand new December last year. I changed the oil once hitting the 1,000 mile mark (according to Lexus it should be 10,000 miles) and I'm glad I did. The oil didn't look brand new. I didn't see any glitters but I know the color didn't look new at all. Now I'm doing 3,000 mile oil changes.

My wife has an NX 300h and she bought the service plan. They oil change her oil every 10,000 miles. I too looked at the oil in her car and it's only been 4,000 miles and it looks dirty. I'm changing that oil later and start her car also on a 3,000 mile oil change interval.

 

0W-20 is too damn thin for warmer climates. If you are in a cold climate run 0W-30, same cold start performance and better for extended drives.

 

Consider a 0w-30 for superior base stocks and cold pumping performance

 

These two numbers tell you pretty much nothing about the base. HTHS, cold crank viscosity, pour point & NOACK are usually way better indicators of the quality of the oil - if you can find a VOA that does these tests, which also usually gives you the IR spectroscopy profile that easily gives away the base. There are 5w20 oils with better (and stable over service) HTHS and than most 0w30s. Not cheap, of course. Now, if only the price was always a good indicator of the quality of the oil...

Aaanyways, mine (-FSE) was ran for ~240k km (have the service records) before I got it on TGMO 0w20 (because hybrid) and the oil consumption right now has kind of "evaporated" after I stopped using engine braking everywhere - another 200k later. That's on a car with an air filter housing that's known for allowing dust ingress (gs300 & 450h stock housings & filters). I'd be super weird if the -FKS was universally so bad.

 

Go look into the base that most 0w-30s use vs 5w-30s on a percentage basis, the 0s have far more group 4/5 bases and higher HTHS, NOACK etc on the whole.

You can't carry pick the best of the best 5w-20 unless you put it against the the top of the line 30s and it will always lose if you are apples to apples, but you know that already.

Good to hear you had no issues but you likely have prior owners and yourself adhering to maintenance closer than most people do. You also have a hybrid with less run time etc etc, I'm not saying there is a universal issue just that it's not a FSE and wear analysis doesn't lie what oil does better

I never go beyond 5k miles on a change so longer term stability of the more VI rich 0w-XX oils is of zero concern to me. If you push 10k changes then sure, reduce the viscosity spread and pray you don't have contamination or sheer issues near the end of your OCI.

 

Toyota Europe also uses 0W-20... this is full synthetic oil thats pretty expensive.

GR engines have been in production for 20+ years and have been installed in millions of vehicles. Like the video says, it might be production issue with certain years, not a design one.

At least it will run rough and not leave you stranded.