Quote:
Originally Posted by kathyricks
The examples I cited are two of thousands of Toyota engines that have lasted between 500,000 - 1,000,000 miles using a wide variety of brands and weights of conventional oil. Since thousands of Toyota owners have reached that mileage using conventional oil - even using what you consider to be the low quality API "SE" "SF" and "SG" conventional oils that were available 20-35 years ago - a reasonable conclusion is that virtually every Toyota engine that rolls off the assembly line is capable of that kind of mileage if the owner uses conventional oil and practices the similar driving and maintenance habits as the 500,000 - 1,000,000 mile owners.
Used Oil Analysis reports sound objective and scientific but can be badly misleading because the wear numbers don't have much practical meaning. Example: if back in 1975 someone preached to the thousands of future 500,000 - 1,000,000 mile 1975-1995 Toyota owners that use of synthetics would generate "better" UOA wear numbers they'd say: "We don't think those numbers mean much because they fail to educate us about the crucial fact that conventional oil - even API "SE" "SF" and "SG" quality oils - are capable of reliably taking our engines to 500,000 - 1,000,000 miles."
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I agree that Toyota makes great engines, but the reason those examples and others show mega milage is much more because of proper owner maintenence, and much less to do with choice of oil, and I think you and I can agree on that ;-)
But if you take a Toyota engine and not maintain it very well, it surely will not go 200,000 miles much less 500,000 problem free.
But regardless, todays conventional dino oils will show less wear then those of 10+ years ago, and that is not subjective at all. Wear numbers are wear numbers in regard to the metals showing up in used oil analysis.
There are Hyundia and Kia and other "bs" brands where one can find examples of them going 500,000 miles so this really is not saying much. While in Europe I met people that had over 400,000 miles on their Fiats and Fiats are one of the worse cars ever made. I think maintenence has much more to do with it then the brand of engine and oil.
I think Toyota and Honda owners tend to take better care of their cars then say Pontiac, and Mitsubishi owners....it's about owner demographics, social-economics, level of education and I better stop right there! ;-)