My 134,024 K Oil Service

[Tony Prodigy]

G'day Gents,

I decided to carry out an oil service on our Aurion as I have been contemplating reducing my oil change intervals from 10K to between 5 and 7.5K. I decided to do it now having done exactly 5127 K since my last oil service post at 128,897 K.

The day was last Friday and having the day off and being a nice morning I got to work. Initial dipstick check for oil level and colouration was first on the agenda. Pleasantly surprised, it was a hairline off the full mark and a nice golden glow. Good indication for how clean the engine is at 134K having done just over 5K on that oil.

 

Oil stash woken from their slumber 

 

Next was to warm the engine, position the car and prepare necessary equipment and service parts. Genuine Toyota Filter and Sump Washer too. I gave it plenty of time for the oil to settle before dropping the oil plug.

 

While waiting for the oil to drain, I took the opportunity to check the brake pads and adjust the brake fluid. I also needed to check the idler pulleys as one of them was starting to develop a light squeal on cold start up. Man it's a mongrel working on the side of the 2GR-FE. The clearance is ridiculous. That's another thread in itself I thought, so I'll just stick to the oil for now. I'll post up another thread regarding the idler pulleys shortly after this. 
I allowed the oil to drain for a good 2 hrs or so, jacking the car up to the jacks highest reach to extract as much from the inner vertical planes within the engine too. This netted around 100ml or so more not including the filter housing.

  

 

Time to degrease and wash out the innards of the housing, install new filter and O'rings. Don't forget the sump washer too.

 

Primed the new filter with oil prior to Reinstalling the filter housing (Remember, 22Nm torque !!  ), and then time to filler her up with 6 lts of Nulon Fully Synthetic 5W-30 goodness.

 

With the fill complete, I drained the collection tray into an empty 6 lt container and get a rough idea how much loss there had been during that interval. So whilst packing up and putting things away, I refit and torqued the wheels back on and dropped it off the jack. Roughly an hour had passed and the pan was completely drained. I then placed a new unopened 6 lt next to it and compared levels. There was a very slight loss as to be expected with oil filter saturation, residual oil in the engine which you can almost never retrieve and 5K of driving. I'd say that's a pretty darn good result all in all with approximately 100-150 ml down.

I forgot to replace the AIR filter that day, so I did it this morning. Dug through my stash of service bits and grabbed the first one I had which was the Wesfil air cleaner. I have a whole bunch of these and AC Delco branded ones.
One thing I don't recall is seeing the pre filter media attached to the pleated surface of the Wesfil. Hmmm, I thought. Something different. I'll have to monitor this and see if it conflicts with the normal passage of air, otherwise I may be inclined to just peel it off this and the others like it.

This morning started out cloudy, wet, cold and miserable but is starting to fine up now.

Yep it is very dirty as you can all see. It's due for another epic detail 

 

A quick oil level check too this morning. Car hasn't been started since Friday. One thing that annoys me is that it's hard to get an accurate read on the dipstick due to the bend in the tube. It wipes itself on the way up and you can just barely make out the oil level. Anyone else notice this ??
Anyway, she looks ok to me.

And so Ladies and Gents, that concludes my oil service. Thanks for reading and I'll post up again on the next one.

Kind Regards

Tony 

Edited September 5, 2021 by Tony Prodigy

[campbeam]

I have been waiting for this post so I could see the oil condition at 5000 kms or 7500kms for a well maintained engine with no known oil sludge history.  

I did a comparison with my dipstick and found that the oil colour appeared to be darker golden colour after only doing 2500 kms of mostly short distance driving. I had an immediate change of plans and did my version of an overkill oil change with multiple flushes. End result is that the new oil is clear on the dipstick and hard to read.

[Tony Prodigy]

22 hours ago, campbeam said:

I have been waiting for this post so I could see the oil condition at 5000 kms or 7500kms for a well maintained engine with no known oil sludge history.  

I'm glad that it served as a base line for your comparison. I must say that regular oil changes with a high quality fully synthetic certainly pays dividends if one follows a strict regime as early as possible. Oil is pretty cheap so I can't imagine hearing a protest from those who CAN DIY. Unfortunately for those who can't or won't will have to pay shop rates plus their oil and may be inclined to stretch it out past 10k.

22 hours ago, campbeam said:

I did a comparison with my dipstick and found that the oil colour appeared to be darker golden colour after only doing 2500 kms of mostly short distance driving.

Yeah, that makes sense as there is more potential for carbon contamination from your stop, go, short distance drives. I bet that if you did an oil change then went on a road trip, the oil would be lighter in colour. She's getting there though.

[Tony Prodigy]

I just had a thought. Next oil change, I will see if I can get my probe camera in through the sump plug hole just for kicks and see if there's anything interesting in there. Hoping to get a snap shot of the oil pick up screen, if that's even possible from that angle.

[campbeam]

20 minutes ago, Tony Prodigy said:

I'm glad that it served as a base line for your comparison. I must say that regular oil changes with a high quality fully synthetic certainly pays dividends if one follows a strict regime as early as possible. Oil is pretty cheap so I can't imagine hearing a protest from those who CAN DIY. Unfortunately for those who can't or won't will have to pay shop rates plus their oil and may be inclined to stretch it out past 10k.

Yeah, that makes sense as there is more potential for carbon contamination from your stop, go, short distance drives. I bet that if you did an oil change then went on a road trip, the oil would be lighter in colour. She's getting there though.

I am not too critical of those paying dealers or mechanics to service their vehicles as per the owners manual. Also different circumstances when you have a new vehicle in the warranty period as well as financial commitments. Short distance driving is a known contributor to oil contamination and oil sludge formation. I am planning upon doing some 1/2 day highway trips to see how quickly the oil colour changes. Past experience of using Shell Ultra is that the oil colour changes to a very dark colour after only 1000 kms. After I stopped whining, I realised that the extra detergent additives had done their job of cleaning the engine internals.

18 minutes ago, Tony Prodigy said:

I just had a thought. Next oil change, I will see if I can get my probe camera in through the sump plug hole just for kicks and see if there's anything interesting in there. Hoping to get a snap shot of the oil pick up screen, if that's even possible from that angle.

Good idea to use the probe camera. Look forward to a snap shot of the oil pick up screen as another benchmark. I have been meaning to get a decent stand alone probe camera. Let an opportunity go by when Trade Tools had them on special and now they are out of stock.

[Tony Prodigy]

8 minutes ago, campbeam said:

I have been meaning to get a decent stand alone probe camera. Let an opportunity go by when Trade Tools had them on special and now they are out of stock.

Take a look on Aliexpress. You'll be surprised the range they have on offer. I like to compare aliexpress, ebay and Amazon and see which platform offers the better deal.

https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=SB_20210905232254&SearchText=endoscope++camera

[Sebastian Woodhouse]

The screen will (or should) be only 5mm or so from the sump floor - it’s probably more likely that you will be wanting to see a clean floor and not drifts of sludge around the intake.

 

[Tony Prodigy]

9 hours ago, Sebastian Woodhouse said:

The screen will (or should) be only 5mm or so from the sump floor - it’s probably more likely that you will be wanting to see a clean floor and not drifts of sludge around the intake.

 

That's what I suspected. Either way, it would make for a bit of entertainment peering inside the sump. Boys with their toys stuff hahaha..

[ZZT86]

Next thing you know Tony is happily making AMD style YouTube clips for us all to enjoy 😉 May the lord bless you & keep you 👍

ps: xclnt detailed writeup as always

Edited September 7, 2021 by ZZT86

[Tony Prodigy]

10 hours ago, ZZT86 said:

Next thing you know Tony is happily making AMD style YouTube clips for us all to enjoy 😉 May the lord bless you & keep you 👍

ps: xclnt detailed writeup as always

Very kind of you to say, but I don't think I'd have the patience to fiddle around with cameras, editing etc. It's very time consuming too. I take my hat off to youtubers. It's not easy to create content for daily consumption. In most cases it's a full time gig and I'm happy to keep my day job for now 😜😄