Low Mileage Oil Changes

If you generally warm the engine completely when you drive your car, once a year should be ok if you only drive a little over 3000 miles in that year. If you do short trips in cold weather, you should probably change it twice a year even with few miles of driving.

You need to do whatever your owner's manual says to keep the warranty up.

If it were out of warranty, I'd use synthetic (more detergent) and do it once a year along with the filter.

The reason I use Mobil 1 is for better hot and cold protection. In Toronto, we go from -30 to 100 and cold starts are nasty for any engine.

Synthetic "wears out" less, meaning its viscosity doesn't decrease as much with age as mineral oil. Also, synthetic changes viscosity less with temperature than regular oil.

What's the

Synthetic "wears out" less, meaning its viscosity doesn't decrease as much with age as mineral oil. Also, synthetic changes viscosity less with temperature than regular oil. If you live in an area where it goes from moderate temperature to very cold, the more constant viscosity is a good thing, both for cold starts and for the engine.

I, personally don't use synthetic because if you live where they dump megatons of salt on the roads as I do, the engine will outlast the body of a car no matter what kind of oil you use, as long as you don't run out of oil.

When we owned an RX 300, the dealer told us to change every 5k miles owing to the oil gelling problem. Of course, the 5 k service is $150.00.

Tom,

$150 for an oil change is a total ripoff. I take a jug of Mobil 1 to my dealership and have them perform the oil change. It costs about $22 for the filter and labour and about $30 for the oil. The prices quoted are Canadian $$.

Lexus bills it as a "minor" service -- with a laundry list of checks. We were also advised that not having service done by Lexus could complicate and not assure warranty work, particularly when considering the oil gelling problem. We traded on a Honda Pilot at our local Honda dealer who has always treated me squarely. We have not been impressed with Lexus.

That's total B.S. As long as you do the services in the book and keep receipts, no auto manufacturer can deny warranty repairs. That being said, the real danger of not doing the right services is in the long term AFTER the warranty period. So as long as you change the oil and do the bigger maintenance as per the book, don't worry about it. And don't OVERmaintain it either.

Yeah -- you have to hire a lawyer.

Don't be so quick about saying that you have to hire a lawyer.

If the dealer is saying that Lexus will not honor the warranty because the customer changed his/her oil than the dealer is speaking out of the side of his mouth because he has nothing to say about it. The warranty is from Toyota. If Toyota/Lexus is saying it than they are in violation of Section 102 of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. This section covers tie-in sales. The section forbids, "You must use our service and products or the warranty is void" type of statement. Toyota found this out not too long ago when it tried to disallow oil changes done at Jiffy Lube and the like in the gelling case. (Assuming that the plaintiffs followed the change intervals) They could have faced a class action lawsuit in federal court. A suit that they had no way of wining because the violation of the act is cut and dry. And since it is in federal court, Toyota would not only have to paid the judgment against itself but would have also had to pay the plaintiffs lawyers fees.

OVERmaintain

Follow the instructions in the owners manual. Consumer Reports did a study on NYC taxicabs. They took brand new cabs, and split them into two, statistically significant groups. The first group received oil changes every three thousand miles. The second group received them every five to six thousand miles (based on manufacturer's specifications).

At the end of 100,000 miles, they tore down the engines, and measured various components. They discovered that there was no difference between the two engines.

Follow the instructions in your owners manual.

Chris