RX3302004

My manual says every 7500 miles on oil changes. I won't drive that many miles in 6 months. I've always felt that 6 months was a good maximum interval on oil changes. I'm running regular oil.
What do you guys do? Thanks.

RX330inFL

The dealers had most of us when new at 6 month or 5K mile service intervals. I do understand the Owner's Manual and that 7500 miles was the supposed to be normal driving and 5000 mile intervals for severe conditions. Still, we chose not to get on the bad side of the dealership while we were under warranty and/or just followed their instructions.

Personally, my RX sees less than 300 miles a month these days. So, I change the oil once a year, I use Mobil 1, regardless of miles unless I make one of my long trips up to PA and back. If you are putting 5K miles on your RX in six months I would change at that interval. Twice a year is sufficient and you can use a local Toyota shop as necessary which is quite a bit cheaper if needed. Remember, short trips are hard on oil and your engine.

kiwi

i agree with the above,

i used to do mine every 3 months / 5000km (3000miles) but with the fuel mileage becoming a concern i recently switched to Royal Purple, and i change that every 10,000km (6,000miles), which for me will end up being about every 9 months ish.

i currently have 194,000km on it (120,000miles) and think i will be just fine.

to note, i havent noticed any change in fuel mileage as of yet, its been less than a year, and at this point i dont think i will. so if you have a similar thought, it might not pan out. the theory is less friction, less energy to move the engine.

anyway.

tomit

I'd recommend an oil change at 6 month's intervals or 5000 miles, whichever comes first. And use a synthetic oil - I use Walmart's cheapest synthetic and it works fine. Also, I add a bottle of fuel injection cleaner to the gas at every oil change.

If your normal driving is only short routes, I would do a 30 minute highway drive every 2 weeks to burn off the water that condenses in the oil during short trips.

Tom

Lexmex

I generally don't run beyond 7,000 to 7,500 miles on my RX300, and that loves to chew up the oil even more than the RX330. I am actually trying out the Royal Purple 5W30, but my oil of choice over the years has been the Castrol 0W30, which actually is more chemically like a 0W40.

I recently ran the Castrol in a 2006 4Runner V8 RWD, for nearly 10K, hardly had any consumption (I know these oils get reformulated every so often), so I am tempted to try a 10K run when I am done with the RP.

takeshi74

Whichever comes first between the recommended interval and one year. I'd suggest getting UOA's versus polling people about oil change intervals.