actually, you said: "I drive a car 1500 miles and then do the first oil change".
then, just to make sure it wasn't a typo or that you were mistaken the first time, you said: "I would still take it pretty easy for the first 1500 miles, and stop and have the oil changed".
so you said to change it after 1500 miles. twice. not 3000 miles.
an imbecile is one who not only doesn't now what they're talking about, but doesn't have the balls to admit it when caught, or worse, tries to b.s. their way out of it. you sir, are the imbecile.
i say that, given that i can't be bothered to do the tribology myself, but as someone that has done analysis on engine wear, reading the freakin' book is the way to go. not too hard. unless you can't read. or get past the first paragraph of "blather".
Question: would the sludge-filled Toyota engines have benefited from 3K changes vs. 5K or 7.5K changes?
The fact is, the carmakers put out products of sometimes questionable quality. The Toyota sludging engines are an example. We, the consumers, won't know this until it's too late.
the /correct/ insurance against that is opening the oil filler cap and looking inside once in a while. you should do that anyway when checking for fluid levels, leaks, etc., as with many cars, it's where you'll see first signs of head gasket leakage.
Plus, it's a very bad idea to change your oil that soon. Some dealers put signs up in their service areas warning customers not too change the oil on new cars too soon.
Again, follow the manual. Too much maintenance can be as bad as too little.
Well, my point is that the sludging occurred when following the factory recommended interval. Then it came out: y'all weren't changing your oil often enough. Then it all came out: Toyota screwed up in the design of that engine.
If we can't trust the factory engineer recommendations from Toyota, then it's in our own hands to determine what a comfortable interval would be to try to eliminate such problems.
Toyota seems to think so. That is what they recommended when they were having problems with engines presenting with what they referred to as oil "gelling" ;)
that's not strictly true. it's the manual "as revised". each time a tsb is issued, it's what's in the tsb that prevails. just like a service pack or software update for your computer.
if you don't want to follow the manual's service schedule, do oil analysis. all this blind gut stuff is utterly retarded. so is never checking the simple stuff that can be easily checked come to that, and looking inside the rocker cover is hardly difficult to do.
as for toyota sludging, it wasn't /every/ toyota that did it, just a very small subset of users that would literally drive around the block, then stop. repeatedly. if the oil never reached operating temperature but was constantly loaded with condensates, i'm sure pretty much any car would be susceptible. and you then have to ask, to what degree does the engineer have to anticipate statistical outliers?
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