Need your opinions on first oil change

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Hi everyone , i,m new to the board , this is my first post , great site by the way ,have been lurking for a while.

I have a 2008 Toyota Tundra that is due for its first oil change, what is a good oil for this vehicle? Details below.

Toyota Tundra, 2008 , 3000 miles

5.7 liter I Force engine

Automatic trans

4x4 drive

This not my daily driver, mainly for vacations road trips and fishing and hunting trips in North east USA.

Thanks for your opinions , ps should i consider synthetics also?

Tundraz
 
Any 5w-30 oil changed @ 5k will be fine with your Tundra.

We have a fleet of them at work and they are lucky to see 7k-9k OCI (my 2007 has close to 70k) and they are fine. They see many hours of idling, HARD 4x4 use and just keep on going.

Brakes are the weak part of the truck. Mine is on its 3rd set of pads and rotors.

Remember you have a 5 year 60k powertrain warranty and they require 5k or 6months (whichever comes first) OCIs.

Take care and
welcome2.gif


Bill

PS: All of ours have the 4.7l (state contract) Excellent engine. Also make sure you get the belt changed before 90k. When they go, its ugly. (motor is toast)
 
If you are only going to run it for trips and whatnot. Maybe put 5k a year on it, you could run regular name brand oil and change it once or twice a year. At that rate the truck will fall apart before the engine wears out. If you like the idea of putting the best in your truck throw some PP in there and change it once a year. Heck your only talking 20 bucks a year for synthetic and a differance of maybe 8 bucks from conventional. My family is from PA and most do 10k changes on Synthetic and there trucks seem to do fine. I personally would not do that but several of theres have over 150k on them and no oil related issues. Most of there issues are rust issues due to winter salt. Body rust, brake binding and brake lines rusting are probably the most common problems up there. The nice thing about the synthetic is you will get a little better flow when really cold outside. Good luck, thats i nice truck you got there.
 
welcome fellow PA'er.
please, do yourself a favor, DON'T ask for opinions around here; it's bad enough when you get them W/O asking, but asking for them just opens up a whole train wreck of a wasp's nest. (how's that for a mixed metaphor?)
neat truck, btw, enjoy.
 
Consider synthetic oil if you'll be driving in frigid winter weather, or driving heavy and hot in the summer, or after the full engine warranty if you want extended oil drain intervals.

Otherwise, any top brand oil of the viscosity specified (5w-30 still, or now 5w-20?). Use the full oil drain interval specified in your owner's manual after this first early oil change. Use any top brand filter (and FRAM isn't a top brand).
 
Originally Posted By: Bill in Utah
Any 5w-30 oil changed @ 5k will be fine with your Tundra.

We have a fleet of them at work and they are lucky to see 7k-9k OCI (my 2007 has close to 70k) and they are fine. They see many hours of idling, HARD 4x4 use and just keep on going.

Brakes are the weak part of the truck. Mine is on its 3rd set of pads and rotors.

Remember you have a 5 year 60k powertrain warranty and they require 5k or 6months (whichever comes first) OCIs.

Take care and
welcome2.gif


Bill

PS: All of ours have the 4.7l (state contract) Excellent engine. Also make sure you get the belt changed before 90k. When they go, its ugly. (motor is toast)

yes I could say I agree with BILL
43.gif

to find what oil is best for you take BILL's advice, all of the specified oils are good enough for him and the rest of the planet, it is so easy to choose a qualified oil, view the one on the list, I'm sure the one that is the best will jump out at ya!
Oh let me warn you there is only a few on the list that qualify, be careful picking, you only have a/z to choose from! LOL!
http://eolcs.api.org/FindBrandByServiceCategory.asp?ServiceCategory=SM
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted By: Ken2
Consider synthetic oil if you'll be driving in frigid winter weather, or driving heavy and hot in the summer, or after the full engine warranty if you want extended oil drain intervals.

Otherwise, any top brand oil of the viscosity specified (5w-30 still, or now 5w-20?). Use the full oil drain interval specified in your owner's manual after this first early oil change. Use any top brand filter (and FRAM isn't a top brand).

A TOP BRAND would be a TOP selling brand NO?
 
Thanks a lot everyone, i appreciate your opinions.

Yes it does get very frigid up here in the mountains of North East PA so i will go 5-20 in the Winter and 5-30 in summer , the PP sounds like a good deal especially that its a reasonable price at Walmart.

How about the Castrol Synthetic Blend in 5-30 would this be a good oil for this truck?

BTW i did not know that the 4.7 Liter engine used a Belt, i think the 5.7 uses a Chain,but i must check into that.

Thanks again.

Tundraz
 
Any decent oil will work great!

FWIW, Mobil is offering a $10 rebate on their 0W-20 and 0W-30 'Advanced Fuel Economy' oils. AFAIK, either will work fine and fulfill the warranty requirements. (I'm somewhat of a 'thick oil' guy and would personally use the 0W-30)

http://www.bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1474062

Autozone (if you have them back in PA?) has 5qt of M1, plus M1 filter for 30$, or hit Wally World and buy a 5qt 'jug' for $22. Subtract the $10 rebate and you've got yourself a nice deal.

Find done decent stuff on sale, use it, and don't worry!
cool.gif
 
Opinions about oil and oil filters are as varied as women's shoes.

New car engines are designed to use synthetic motor oil. You should choose a top name brand oil and filter stick with them. Personally, I use Valvoline All Season 10W-30 or Valvoline MaxLife 10W-30, depending on which car I am servicing. If you change the oil yourself you should use a filter with the lowest micron filtering certification. If you have the oil changed at a strip joint (horrors) or sometimes called a fast lube drive thru, you don't have a choice of the oil or filter that is used.

I have two low milage Ford family cars and three older high milage hobby cars and each of the family cars are driven no less than 5 miles per week to "spread the load". I am still amazed how well the Valvoline Max-Life Synthetic-Conventional oil blend works in the high milage cars. I use AC Delco UPF52 Ultra Guard Gold oil filters rated at 8 microns in the '63 and '91 Chevy hobby cars. In comparison, the usual oil filters are rated from 20 to 30 microns and that is just like sandblasting your rod and main bearings. Mobil 1 filters are rated at 12 microns. Unfortunatley, Champion only makes the AC Delco UPF52 Ultraguard Gold for a few American cars. No one wants to pay the $21 MSRP each they are asking for them. I have 50 of those AC Delco filters to use in my hobby cars when those filters are discontinued. I am sure that is just a matter of time. When I start liking somthing it is not around very long.

Be advised: Until recently, I have taken the family cars to the "strip joints" due to time restraints and I noticed every one of the drain plugs on those have stripped threads. Fortunatly not stripped to the point of causing a leak. Those 1/2"-20 plugs require no more than 15 - 20 lb. torque and the plug strippers put as much as 40 lb on them. . If they begin to leak, maybe I can salvage the oil pans by using drain plugs with oversize threads.
 
Originally Posted By: Duntov
Opinions about oil and oil filters are as varied as women's shoes.

New car engines are designed to use synthetic motor oil.
First of all
welcome2.gif


Your first sentence is correct.

Your second sentence is
crackmeup2.gif
..

Bill
 
I think he meant that a new car can be run with synthetic oil in the pan without worries Bill. The old theories about synthetic being inappropriate for break in, from a technical perspective, are dated. Now would I personally use a full synthetic in a vehicle for it's first oil change from the factory if it was not required fill? Probably not because I believe in running shorter drain intervals to get the lead (and other various [censored]) out- so to speak. In that case it would be a waste of $ to run an expensive full synthetic oil for sure.
 
These engines are not hard on oil at all. Any good name brand oil will do nicely. I would use M15W30 in it and initially and do a UOA and see where it was. I would also try Rotella-T 5W40 since it is cheaper by a few dollars and has a beefier additive package and can be used year round since it is a 5W oil. M1 0W40 will more then likely produce insanely low wear numbers and will also provide a boost in fuel economy even over the 5W20 since it is a 0W oil the first 20 minutes of operation you will see an increase in fuel economy. After the first 20 minutes of operation it does not matter what the first digit is economy will stabalize.

My Moms 2003 Tundra has been runing on M1 10W30 and M1 15W50 and M1 0W40 and it has to date loved anything that has been run in it. I understand we are talking about a different engine but to date Toyota has relied heavily on their Lexus derived engine designs and what they learned from designing them to build all of their modern V6's and V8's and it shows in their insanely low wear numbers. So I do not think we need to see a UOA before we make some assumptions. The only thing that I might worry about with the new 5.7 is that it might shear the oil more then past designs due to the timing chains and cam gears.

The Toyota dealership I worked at did not stock any 5W20 except in the Toyota plastic oil bottles sold by the quart. They had bulk 5W30 and 10W30 and their synthetic was bought from Penzoil Rep by the case. Almost all of the shop chemicals where Penzoil Professional line. They did have Toyota Chemicals but those where just for warranty work none warranty work was always the Penzoil stuff. My point is that even dealerships do not always use what is printed on then oil fill cap and seldom do they use OEM chemicals either. The trick is to never volunteer any information that is not asked. You never tell the service writer you have been using M1 0W40 for example! The only time an OEM does UOA is one sludged up engines. Even when you send an engine to the OEM for forensic tear down you have to drain all the fluids in order to ship it or their is a big Hazmat fee! When they drain the fluids they normally drain them into a nasty looking plastic container or a bulk drain so nothing could be said about the fluid because they never drain it into a clean container unless their is sludge!

I am still not a huge fan of 5W20 even in applications that call for it. I just can not see limiting myself to something that is right on the margin of safe operation with no head room for extreme abuse. It does not matter if we are talking aircraft, electronics, motor oil and medicine I like to have some head room! I do not like running right on the margin even if it has produced good results so far!I am not a a marginal type of guy.
 
You must use synthetic oil if your vehicle has a roller tappet cam with an O2 sensor and catalytic converter. The clearances and oil passages in modern engines are designed for synthetic oil that have low ZDDP formulation; zinc (anti-wear), phosphorus (anti-wear) and calcimum (dispersant/detergent).

The EPA has mandated the U.S. car manufacturers to design engines to use oil with low ZDDP to reduce pollution and synthetic oil in order to reduce dependence on OPEC imported oil since the early 1980s. EPA approved oil has less than .12% ZDDP. Starting in 1972, GM did not machine an oil "spit-hole" on the camshaft side of the rod cap parting line on V8 and V6 engines. Chevrolet immediately started having warranty problems due to flat cams after the rods were redesigned without a "spit hole" to oil the cam lobes. Unfortunately, the spit-hole in the rod cap parting line would also sling oil onto the cylinceder walls creating excessive pollution and made it difficult to pass pollution tests as outlined in the second phase of the 1970 Clean Air Act. The EPA said the oil on the cylinder walls was creating excessive pollution but left the wear and warranty problems for the auto manufacturers to solve. That is when the factory introduced roller tappet cams in their regular production engines.

Valvoline VR1 Racing Oil is considered "Not Street Legal" because it has .22% ZDDP and should be used in any vehicle that can be licensed as a Classic or street rod and does not require a catalytic converter and O2 sensor. Notice the Valvoline VR1 Racing Oil does not have the ASTM enviromental seal of approval on the container. If the oil you buy has the EPA star-burst seal of approval on the container it is low ZDDP and should not be use in high performance engines that use a flat tappet camshaft. Other oil companies claim to have high "zinc" content but their ZDDP percentages are "properitary" and they will not release that information to the public....yeah sure, uh-huh.
 
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