carbuff

The 2007 ES350 manual says first oil change to be made at 5,000 miles. I have driven my ES six full months and have less than 2,000 miles on it.

The environmental condiitions where I live (Maricopa County, Arizona) are considered severe half of the year and might warrant more frequent changes.

Should I change my oil and filter now based upon the months driven or should I wait until I have driven 5,000 miles before doing so?

I do not know whether factory uses dino or synthetic oil but I intend to use full synthetic for every change.

garsarno

I use Mobil One and go either 4 months / 4,000 miles. It usually is four months as I have the car one year and has 8400 miles.

gatorcb

you can go way way way more than 4 months 4000 on mobil1. You can easily do a year and 7500 (probably much more) in most cases.

<VENOM>

Simply put your car needs to get to the proper operating temperature and then stay their for 20 minutes, a good highway run will do it some good, keep the entire car in check and bakes out all the moisture that builds up in all the operating systems not just the engine, the reason for changing the oil at the time mark instead of the mileage is due to the moisture buildup.

The oil industry has done a phenomenal job at making people believe they need to change their oil every 3k, suddenly 5k has been accepted but whats odd is how many cars have nothing but routine oil changes with 60-90k on the clock and all other fluids are original.

Lastly the new 3.5 holds 6.4 quarts, seems excessive but I think Toyota did that to avoid another sludge prone engine, German cars hold about 8 quarts of synthetic and go 15k before an oil change, how long before Toyota/Lexus start putting synthetic in and recommending a longer interval.

kingofire

The answer is simple. Change it now because you want to follow the manufacturers recommendations for WARRANTY reasons. If you dont change it out every 6 months or 5k miles they can deny any warranty work if proper maintenance records are not provided or unsatisfactory.

<VENOM>

Dealership service writers generally stick to the mileage,

MD350

How long are you going to keep the car? If you are keeping it for the long term and want 100K+ miles out of it, than change it now. If you are only keeping it a couple of years, then you could probably let it go up to 1 year or 5K miles, whichever comes first.

carbuff

My thanks to all for your responses.

toneman

Exactly--one could go that long using good dino oil. One would really have to abuse the heck out of the engine (e.g., drive it like a taxi) to not be able to squeeze more than 4 months and/or 4K miles out of M1 motor oil...

Heck--I use M1 on my GMC Yukon Denali, and according to its' engine oil life monitor (highly-praised for its' accuracy by more than a few pundits) I could squeeze 9K miles out of it if primarily stop-and-go/city driving...and 12K miles if primarily highway driving. The point here isn't to laud GM's OLM, but to show that long oil life is one of M1's attributes when compared to dino oil.